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[CLfrDSTANFORDj? 

IINIVERSITV 




PRESENTED BY THOMUS WEITON STANFORD 




COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE 



ABBRDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS. 



COCK LANE 



AND 



COMMON-SENSE 



BY 



ANDREW LANG 

II 






• • « 



LONDON 
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 

AND NEW YORK : 15 EAST i6th STREET 

1894 






/I if 




• • I • 



• • • • • 

• • • • 









•> » k 



c b w w 









TO 



JAMES PAYN, Esq. 

Dear Paytty 

Spirits much more rare and valuable than those 
spoken of in this book are yours. Whatever ' Mediums * 
way be able to do, you can * transfer ' High Spirits to 
your readers; one of whom does not hope to convert 
you, and will be fortunate enough if, by this work, he 
can occasionally bring a smile to the lips of his favourite 
novelist 

With more affection and admiration than can be 
publicly expressed, 

Believe me, 

Yours ever, 

ANDREW LANG. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

ix 



Preface .--.... 

Introduction --..-.. i 

Savage Spiritualism ------ 33 

Ancient Spiritualism- - - - - - 56 

Comparative Psychical Research - - - - 84 

Hauntid Houses - - - - - - 127 

Cock Lane and Common-sense .... 161 

Apparitions, Ghosts, and Hallucinations - - 180 

ScRYiNS OR Crystal-gazing ----- 212 

The Sicond Sight .--.-- 226 

Ghosts before the Law .... - 248 

A Moeern Trial for Witchcraft - - - - 274 

Presbiterian Ghost Hunters . . - - 285 

The Logic of Table-turning ... - 304 

The Chost Theory of the Origin of Religion - - 333 



PREFACE. 

This book deals with topics which it seems 
difficult to discuss in a spirit of fairness and 
right reason. While engaged on the essays, 
the author has gleaned the remonstrances of a 
few philosophers and friends. One of these 
thinkers (a rural dean) points out that human 
evidence is very untrustworthy, that he himself 
has been described as wearing the kilt, whereas 
he wears the trews ; as editor of the Monks 
Vade-Mecuniy a paper which he never saw ; 
as constant in his devotion to a large green 
umbrella, his umbrella, in fact, being blue, and 
so forth. ^ 

The writer has answered that these objections 
apply to all human evidence, and that several of 
the statements in this volume are not the chatter 
of personal paragraph-makers, but are, in some 
cases, attested on oath, in others, have survived 
strict cross-examination. 

Again, the writer has urged that the testimony 
to abnormal events is much on a par with that 

1 These, of course, are fanciful examples. 



for anthropologica] details, manners and cus- 
toms. When Anthropology first challenged 
the interpretation of myths given by Philolo- 
gists, we were told that Anthropology relied on 
mere travellers' tales. It was answered that 
the coincidence of report, in all ages and 
countries, and from all manner of independent 
observers, unaware of each other's existence, 
was a strong proof of general accuracy, while 
the statements of learned and scholarly men, 
like Codrington, Callaway, and many others, 
confirmed the strange stories of travellers like 
Herodotus, of missionaries, traders and ad- 
venturers. The same test of evidence, uni- 
versally coincident, applies to many of the 
alleged phenomena in this book. Indeed, the 
anthropological aspect of the phenomena led to 
the writing of the essays. 
i The author was next informed that many 
' 'ghost stories' had broken down, like a noted 
one from China, and it was inferred that all 
were equally incapable of standing examination. 
But this is not really the case ; many of them 
(whatever we may think about them) are not 
destroyed by comparison of dates. In anthro- 
pology we receive many reports, as that such a 
people has no religion, or that it practises this or 
that custom, whereas later inquiry proves that 



I 

J 



PREFACE. XI 

It has plenty of religion, and that the custom is 
absent from its institutions. But we do not, 
therefore, conclude that all anthropological 
evidence is worthless, because some of it is 
incorrect. This is an argument of no value in 
any branch of human affairs. In every field of 
study there occur incorrect descriptions, and, in 
all, the bias of witnesses has to be allowed for : 
illusions of memory, of vanity, of the artistic 
instinct have to be discounted. 

But these illusions, and other idola, are not 
all on one side. Let any one compare Sir David 
Brewster s letter to his daughter on the phe- 
nomena which he witnessed in the presence of 
Home, with his contemporary letter to the Times 
on the same subject.^ In which letter did Sir 
David tell the truth ? ^ Here we have a trained 
observer, an authority in exact science, who 
flatly contradicts himself about an event not a 
week old at the time of his writing. He has 
one story for the public, a story directly con- 
tradictory of it for his family circle. 

Next we are informed that hallucinations 
occur, and that chance coincidences are com- 
mon. Precisely, hallucinations do occur ; the 

^ Brewster's L»/p, p. 257, 1869. 

2 The letter to the Times is published in the Life of D. D. 
Home. 



PREFACE. 



only question is, do coincidences correspoiu 
with them more frequently than the laws of 
chance allow for, or are the hallucinations and the 
coincidences so common as to suggest a causal 
connection? Lord Brougham, as a boy, made 
a covenant with a friend that he who died first 
should appear to the survivor. The friend went 
to India. Many years passed ; the friend was 
not in Lord Brougham's conscious mind when 
he appeared to that nobleman in his bath ! 
The friend's day for dying chanced to coincide 
with Lord Brougham's day for having an 
hallucination. This is very scientific, but it is 
also scientific to ask whether such coincidences 
are more frequent than mere chance will explain. 
Oddly enough the writer's rural friend, already 
spoken of. at once introduces the phrase, 'the 
supernatural '. This argument is a mere sur- 
vival. Nobody is talking about ' the super- 
natural'; we are merely discussing the rather 
unusual. A ' wraith,' if wraiths there be, is as 
' natural ' as an indigestion. 

Then we come to imposture. The ' rapping 
trick,' says another friend, ' is one of the oldest 
things in the world '. That is one reason why 
it interests us : a secular and world-wide im- 
posture is a matter of curious interest, like a 
fairy tale which is found all the world over. 



But is it impossible that impostures are imita- 
tions of real plienomena which gave the sug- 
gestion ? In many cases, as we show, the 
explanations offered by common-sense are 
inconsistent, inadequate, and can only be ac- 
cepted by aid of a strong bias which influences 
the reasoner. No doubt the writer himself has 
a bias. He is conscious of a bias in favour of 
fair play and ordinary logic. He is unconscious 
of a bias in favour of common-sense. Fair play 
and right reason have but rarely been applied 
to these subjects. The old inquirers of the 
Restoration frankly avowed their desire to con- 
fute scepticism. From 1720 to our own day 
Rationalism has been just as prejudiced, and 
hardly less frank. It has been often said that, 
when exact inquiry is made, all ' ghosts ' will 
vanish, as in the Chinese case, and such inquiry, 
it is urged, should be made. But when people 
make it, they are accused of superstition. 
Common-sense bullied several generations, till 
they were positively afraid to attest their own 
unusual experience. Then it was triumphantly 
proclaimed that no unusual experiences were 
ever attested. Even now many people dare 
not say what they believe about occurrences V 

witnessed by their own senses. All this frame 
of mind is as unphilosophical as may be. On 



the. Qthgr side we have writers, like the laie Mr, 
/'Dale Owerii' who avow and display a potent 
bias in favour of establishing a belief in a future 
life. They, too, just like the sceptics, blink 
awkward facts. Mr. Dale Owen gives the 
story of the Stockwell mystery, but does not 
give Hone's account of Braidley's account of the 
medium's confession of imposture, whatever it 
may be worth. In brief, the themes are not 
treated with scientific fairness as a general rule. 
Arguments are advanced and accepted on both 
sides which would scarcely be looked at in any 
other matter. 

The writer has endeavoured to be fair, and 
trusts that, relatively speaking, he has succeeded. 
To his mind the most plausible theory is that 
our savage ancestors were subject to great 
mental confusion ; that they did not distinguish 
between dreams and waking ; that their condi- 
tions of life and scanty supplies of food were 
; favourable to trances and hallucinations ; and 
' that they practised a kind of elementary hyp- 
notism. From all this would arise a set of 
unfounded beliefs. These beliefs, like myths 
and customs, would endure among the peasant 
classes. The folk would inherit the traditions 
as to what hallucinatory phenomena they might 
expect, and, as a result of self-suggestion and of 



expectant attention, these phenomena they 
would actually behold. This would account for 
the continuity of phenomena, which again are 
fraudulently imitated by mediums. 

This is a conceivable and even probable theory. 
The writer, however, cannot say that he holds 
it with exclusive and perfect conviction. He 
does not feel perfectly assured that Lord Craw- 
ford, Sir David Brewster, Mr. Crookes. Mr. 
Hamilton Aide, and many others, were deceived 
by conjuring (on all occasions), or saw tables 
and people float about in the air, because of the 
traditional influence exercised by savage hal- 
lucinations. Again, the spontaneous and un- 
expected hallucinations coincident with deaths, 
cannot be explained on this system, and seem 
to demand more continued and exact study, 
while ' collective hallucinations ' of several per- 
sons at the same time are a theme worthy of 
the notice of psychologists. 

It is obvious that, if we have not yet dis- 
covered the limits of human faculty (as many 
historical cases, like that of Joan of Arc, and 
some modem experiments, seem to indicate), 
the fact is of great interest, and possibly of 
momentous consequence, The matter cannot 
be got rid of by the sneer which many of 
its aspects invite, nor can anything be estab- 



XVI PREFACE. 

lished by the assertions of gullible and excited 
witnesses. 

Of the essays in this book, * Savage Spirit- 
ualism ' appeared in LongmatCs Magazine. Ad- 
ditions and alterations have been made. Much 
of * Comparative Psychical Research * was pub- 
lished in the Contemporary Review, but the 
essay is now nearly double its original length. 
The essay on 'Hallucinations' was, in part, 
published in Blackwood's Magazine as * Ghosts 
up to Date \ ' Ghosts before the Law ' was 
in Blackwood's Magazine, The author has 
to thank the editors and publishers of these 
serials for leave to reprint the essays. None of 
the other chapters, which are ten in all, has 
been previously published. 



INTRODUCTION. 

Nature of the subject. Persistent survival of certain Ani- 
mistic beliefs. Examples of the Lady Onkhari, Lucian, 
General Campbell, The Anthropological aspect of the 
study. Difference between this Animistic belief and other 
widely diffused ideas and institutions. Scientific ad- 
mission of certain phenomena ^ and rejection of others. 
Connection between the rejected and accepted phenomena. 
The attitude of Science. Difficulties of investigation 
illustrated, Dr, Carpenter's Theory of unconscious 
Cerebration, Illustration of this Theory, The Failure 
of the Inquiry by the Dialectical Society, Professor 
Huxley^ Mr, G. H, Lewes, Absurdity and charlatanism 
of * Spiritualism \ Historical aspect of the subject. 
Universality of Animistic Beliefs, in every stage ofculturf. 
Not peculiar to savagery, ignorance, the Dark Ages, or 
periods of Religious crisis. Nature of the Evidence, 

It is not without hesitation that this book is 
offered to the reader. Very many people, for very 
various reasons, would taboo the subjects here dis- 
coursed of altogether These subjects are a certain 
set of ancient beliefs, for example the belief in 
clairvoyance, in ' hauntings, ' in events trans- 
cending ordinary natural laws. The peculiarity of 
these beliefs is, that they have survived the wreck 
of faith in such elements of witchcraft as metamor- 
phosis, and power to cause tempest or drought. To 

I 



' COMMON-SKNSE. 

study such themes is 'impious,' or 'superstitious,' 
or ' useless '. Yet to a pathologist, or anthropologist, 
the survivals of beliefs must always be curious and 
attractive illustrations of human nature. 

Ages, empires, civilisations pass, and leave some 
members even of educated mankind still, in certain 
points, on the level of the savage who propitiates 
with gifts, or addresses with prayers, the spirits of 
the dead. 

An example of this endurance, this secular sur- 
vival of belief, may be more instructive and is 
certainly more entertaining than a world of asser- 
tions. In his Etudes Egypticnnes (Tome i. fascic. 2) 
M. Maspero publishes the text and translation of a 
papyrus fragment. This papyrus was discovered 
still attached to a statuette in wood, representing 
' the singer of Ammen, Kena,' in ceremonial dress. 
The document is a letter written by an ancient 
Egyptian scribe, ' To the Instructed Khou of the 
Dame Onkhari,' his own dead wife, the Khou, or 
Khu, being the spirit of that lady. The scribe has 
been 'haunted' since her decease, his home has 
been disturbed, he asks Onkhari what he has done 
to deserve such treatment : ' What wrong have I 
been guilty of that I should be in this state of 
trouble ? what have I done that thou should'st help 
to assail me ? no crime has been wrought against 
thee. From the hour of ray marriage till this day, 
what have I wrought against thee that I need con- 
ceal ? ' 

He vows that, when they meet at the tribunal 
of Osiris, he will have right on his side. 



Tics Isnsr rr tie asaf i^ nainsirsf it -ne Trrmr 
of litt rV*^^ ?m^ -ws niET-rrEs;: 'frrsi z^ szriijt v::^? 
310 ^GQ^sr jourrrsf irr i. ^Tri -ir. VtiirTr itsmr m^emruf-L 

mstamzs zn b5s Pci^rG>i::kar:^ ^ Jir;;rr •mr"nnnnf<=' i 

stori^ Ore l£ rbsm a^sar^K zis ±a2af rr.Fi rb* 
^)ectre of iis ";rrt -wi^ iss$ xdsisf £.Tif T^i^d TiTrr.. 
because b* iiaf p-rnnfrrrEZjr Tif^rffrrfif n brrr mi 
of a pair z^f ^i ^n-:t?s^ zz- -wrrirTr stij "iras^ xj^ftrTretf 
She iadBcaied tb* piLart Trhs:^ i^ 5^ie -wej -7^^ 
hidden, aad sb* t^ parrnt-.f, ~ Mirr.?^ n: inrnr?**:^ 
treats dais narraiii^ zz i spirh zc iniiisrrir irirtz- 
but, if socrh tales w-:^ dic 



would have beer 33 porr: ir: hzs bzzirir- Trss zf: 
belief in the hanniin^ n: a li:25caLrd bjr ^f^* socrh zc 
his wife, the bsiief wrifci frrr^ a n^irs^ AisiraZizi: 
servant froni the siaiSsc wber* ^s fix 5s rcrSei. 
sur\-ived old Egyyc anf 5£sc?n5ec rz' GrTi=*ct- We 
now take a modern ^ryrann^, cjaseily cjcrrgsp-nf^g: 
to that of the Instrscied Kiz^ of the Dizzje OnkiiErL 

In the Pr&cixJim^ (f m P^'zei:^ 5:c3jqn pzn 
xiv. p. 477) the late Genei:£2 Car=pbeZ serjfs. fr:rt 
Gwalior Honse, Soothsate. X- AzrcH 2", iS^' a tsj* 
of personal experiences aad acifoirs- wtiici exactly 
reproduces the story of the Egyptian Scribe. The 
narrative is l ong and not interestir:^, except as an 
illustration d | surviva l, — in all ^j^ nses ^ of the word. 

General Campbell says that his wife died in July, 
1882. He describes himself as of ad\'anced age. and 
cautious in forming opinions. In 1SS2 he bad never 
given any consideration to ' the subject of ultra- 



I 



4 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSR, 

mundane indications'. Yet he recounts examples 
of ' about thirty inexplicable sounds, as if inviting 
my attention specially, and two apparitions or 
visions, apparently of a carefully calculated nature, 
seen by a child visitor, a blood relation of my late 
wife, whom this child had never seen, nor yet any 
likeness of her'. The general then describes his 
house, a new one, and his unsuccessful endeavours to 
detect the cause of the knocks, raps, crashes, and 
other disturbances. Unable to discover any ordinary 
cause, he read some books on ' Spiritualism,' and, 
finally, addressed a note, as the Egyptian Scribe 
directed a letter, to the ' agent ' : ^ Give three raps if 
from my deceased wife ! 

He was rewarded by three crashing sounds, and 
by other peculiar phenomena. All these, unlike the 
scribe, he regarded as sent ' for my particular con- 
viction and comfort '. 

These instances prove that, from the Australian 
blacks in the Hush, who hear raps when the spirits 
come, to ancient Egypt, and thence to Greece, and 
last, in our own time, and in a London suburb, 
similar experiences, real or imaginary, are explained 
by the same hypothesis. No 'survival' can be more 
odd and striking, none more illustrative of the 
permanence, in human nature, of certain elements. 
To examine these psychological curiosities may, or 
may not, be 'useful,' but, at lowest, the study may 
rank as a branch of Mythology, or of Folk-lore. 

It is in the spirit of these sciences, themselves parts 
of a general historical inquiry into the past and present 
' Not the house-agent. 






INTRODUCTION. 5 

of our race, that we would glance at the anecdotes, 
legends, and superstitions which are here collected. 
The writer has been chiefly interested in the question 
of the Evidence, its nature and motives, rather than 
in the question of Fact. It is desirable to know why 
independent witnesses, practically everywhere and 
always, tell the same tales. To examine the origin 
of these tales is not more * superstitious ' than to 
examine the origin of the religious and heroic 
mythologies of the world. It is, of course, easy to 
give both mythology, and * the science of spectres,' 
the go by. But antiquaries will be inquiring, and 
these pursuits are more than mere * antiquarian old 
womanries '. We follow the stream of fable, as we 
track a burn to its head, and it leads us into shy, 
and strange scenes of human life, haunted by very 
fearful wild-fowl, and rarely visited save by the 
credulous. There may be entertainment here, and, 
to the student of his species, there may be instruction. 
On every side we find, as we try to show, in all 
ages, climates, races, and stages of civilisation, consen- 
tient testimony to a set of extraordinary phenomena. 
Equally diffused we find fraudulent imitations of these 
occurrences, and, on one side, a credulity which has 
accepted everything, on the other hand, a scepticism 
which denies and laughs at all the reports. But it 
is a question whether human folly would, everywhere 
and always, suffer from the same delusions, undergo 
the same hallucinations, and elaborate the same 
frauds. The problem is one which, in other matter, 
always haunts the student of man's development : he 
is accustomed to find similar myths, rites, customs. 



1 



6 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

fairy tales, all over the world ; of some he can trace 
the origin to early human imagination and reason, 
working on limited knowledge; about others, he 
asks whether they have been independently evolved 
in several places, or whether they have been diffused 
from a single centre. In the present case, the pro- 
blem is more complicated. Taboos, totemism, 
myths explanatory of natural phenomena, customs 
like what, with Dr. Murray's permission, we call 
the Couvade, are either peculiar to barbarous races, 
or, among the old civilised races, existed as survivals, 
protected by conservative Religion. But such thing; 
as 'clairvoyance,' ' levitation,' 'veridical appari 
tions,' 'movements of objects without physical 
contact,' 'rappings,' 'hauntings,' persist as matters 
of belief, in full modern civilisation, and are attested 
by many otherwise sane, credible, and even scienti- 
fically trained modern witnesses. In this persistence, 
and in these testimonies, the alleged abnormal 
phenomena differ from such matters as nature-myths, 
customs like Suttee, Taboo, Couvade, and Totemism, 
the change of men into beasts, the raising of storms 
by art-magic. These things our civilisation has 
dropped, the belief in other wild phenomena many 
persons in our civilisation retain. 

The tendency of the anthropologist is to explain 
this fact by Survival and Revival. Given the 
savage beliefs in magic, spirit rapping, clairvoyance, 
and so forth, these, like Miirchen, or nursery tales, 
will survive obscurely among peasants and the 
illiterate generally. In an age of fatigued scepticism 
and rigid physical science, the imaginative longings 



INTRODUCTION. 7 

of men will fall back on the savage or peasant 
necromancy, which will be revived perhaps in some 
obscure American village, and be run after by the 
credulous and half-witted. Then the wished-for 
phenomena will be supplied by the dexterity of 
charlatans. As it is easy to demonstrate the 
quackery of paid * mediums,' as that, at all events, 
is a vera causa, the theory of Survival and Revival 
seems adequate. Yet there are two circumstances 
which suggest that all is not such plain sailing. The 
first is the constantly alleged occurrence of * spon- 
taneous ' and sporadic abnormal phenomena, whether 
clairvoyance in or out of hypnotic trance, of effects 
on the mind and the senses apparently produced 
by some action of a distant mind, of hallucinations 
coincident with remote events, of physical prodigies 
that contradict the law of gravitation, or of inexpli- 
cable 'sounds, lights, and other occurrences in certain 
localities. These are just the things which Medicine 
Men, Mediums and classical Diviners have always pre- 
tended to provoke and produce by certain arts or rites. 
Secondly, whether they do or do not occasionally 
succeed, apart from fraud, in these performances, the 
'spontaneous' phenomena are attested by a mass and 
quality of evidence, ancient, mediaeval and modern, 
which would compel attention in any other matter. 
Living, sane, and scientifically trained men now, — 
not to speak of ingenious, and intelligent, if super- 
stitious observers in the past, — and Catholic 
gleaners of contemporary evidence for saintly miracle, 
and witnesses, judges, and juries in trials for witch- 
craft, are undeniably all ' in the same tale '. 



8 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

Now we can easily devise an explanation of t 
stories told by savages, by fanatics, by peasants, by 
persons under ecclesiastical influence, by witches, 
and victims of witches. That is simple, but why 
are sane, scientific, modern observers, and even 
disgusted modern sceptics, in a tale, and that jest 
the old savage tale ? What maizes them repeat the 
stories they do repeat ? We do not so much aslc : 
' Are these stories true ? ' as, ' Why are these stories 
told?' Professor Ray Lankester puts the question 
thus, and we are still at a loss for an answer. 

Meanwhile modern science has actually accepted 
as real, some strange psychological phenomena 
which both science and common-sense rejected, 
between 1720 and 1840, roughly speaking. The 
accepted phenomena are always reported, historically, 
as attendant on the still more strange, and still 
rejected occurrences. We are thus face to face with 
a curious question of evidence : To what extent 
are some educated modern observers under the same 
illusions as Red Men, Kaffirs, Eskimo, Samoyeds, 
Australians, and Maoris? To what extent does 
the coincidence of their testimony with that of races 
BO differently situated and trained, justify curiosity, 
interest, and perhaps suspense of judgment? 

The question of the value of the facts is one to be 
determined by physiologists, physicians, physicists, 
and psychologists. It is clear that the alleged phe- 
nomena, both those now accepted and those still re- 
jected, attend, or are said to attend, persons of singular 
physical constitution. It is not for nothing that 
lambhchus, describing the constitution of his diviner. 



INTRODUCTION. 9 

• 

or seer, and the phenomena which he displays, should 
exactly delineate such a man as St. Joseph of Cuper- 
tino, with his miracles as recounted in the Acta 
Sanctorum'^ (1603-1663). Now certain scientific, and 
(as a layman might suppose), qualified persons, aver 
that they have seen and even tested, in modern in- 
stances, the phenomena insisted on by lamblichus, by 
the BoUandists, and by a great company of ordinary 
witnesses in all climes, ages, and degrees of culture. 
But these few scientific observers are scouted in this 
matter, by the vast majority of physicists and psy- 
chologists. It is with this majority, if they choose 
to find time, and can muster inclination for the task 
of prolonged and patient experiment, that the ulti- 
mate decision as to the portee and significance of the 
facts must rest. The problem cannot be solved and 
settled by amateurs, nor by * common-sense,' that 

Delivers brawling judgments all day long. 
On all things, unashamed. 

Ignorance, however respectable, and however con- 
temptuous, is certainly no infallible oracle on any 
subject. Meanwhile most representatives of physical 
science, perhaps all official representatives, hold 
aloof, — not merely from such performances or pre- 
tences as can only be criticised by professional con- 
jurers, — but from the whole mass of reported abnor- 
mal events. As the occurrences are admitted, even 
by believers, to depend on fluctuating and unascer- 
tained personal conditions, the reluctance of physicists 
to examine them is very natural and intelligible. 

^ Porphyry, Epistola xxi. lamblichus, De Myst,y iii. 2. 



lO COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

Whether the determination to taboo research into 
them, and to denounce their examination as of 
perilous moral consequence, is scientific, or is 
obscurantist, every one may decide for himself. The 
quest for truth is usually supposed to be regardless 
of consequences, meanwhile, till science utters an 
opinion, till Roma locuta est, and does not, after a 
scrambling and hasty inquiry, or no inquiry at all, 
assert a prejudice; mere literary and historical students 
cannot be expected to pronounce a verdict. 

Spiritualists, and even less convinced persons, have 
frequently denounced official men of science for not 
making more careful and prolonged investigations in 
this dusky region. It is not enough, they say, to un- 
mask one imposture, or to sit in the dark four or five 
times with a ' medium '. This affair demands the 
close scrutiny of years, and the most patient and per- 
severing experiment. 

This sounds very plausible, but the few official 
men of science, whose names the public has heard, 
— and it is astonishing how famous among his peers 
a scientific character may be, while the public has 
never heard of him— can very easily answer their 
accusers : ' What,' they may ciy, " are we to investi- 
gate? It is absurd to ask us to leave our special 
studies, and sit for many hours, through many years, 
probably in the dark, with an epileptic person, and 
a few hysterical believers. We are not conjurers 
or judges of conjuring.' Again, is a man like 
Professor Huxley, or Lord Kelvin, to run about the 
country, examining every cottage where there are 
rumours of curious noises, and where stones and 



INTRODUCTION. II 

Other missiles are thrown about, by undetected 
hands ? That is the business of the police, and if the 
police are baffled, as in a Cock Lane affair at Port 
Glasgow, in 1864, and in Paris, in 1846, we cannot 
expect men of science to act as amateur detectives.^ 
Again, it is hardly to be expected that our chosen 
modern leaders of opinion will give themselves up 
to cross-examining ladies and gentlemen who tell 
ghost stories. Barristers and solicitors would be 
more useful for that purpose. Thus hardly any- 
thing is left which physical science can investigate, 
except the conduct and utterances of the hysterical, 
the epileptic, the hypnotised and other subjects who 
are occasionally said to display an abnormal exten- 
sion of the perceptive faculties, for example, by way 
of clairvoyance. To the unscientific intelligence it 
seems conceivable that if Home, for example, could 
have been kept in some such establishment as the 
Salpetriere for a year, and could have been scrut- 
inised and made the subject of experiment, like the 
other hysterical patients, his pretensions might have 
been decided on once for all. But he merely per- 
formed a few speciosa miracula under tests established 
by one or two English men of science, and believers 

' The Port Glasgow story is in Report of the Dialectical Society ^ 
p. 200. The flooring was torn up ; walls, ceilings, cellars, were 
examined by the police, and attempts were made to imitate the noises, 
without success. In this case, as at Rerrick in the end of the seven- 
teenth century, and elsewhere, * the appearance of a hand moving 
up and down ' was seen by the family, ' but we could not catch it : 
it quietly vanished, and we only felt cold air '. The house was 
occupied by a gardener, Hugh McCardle. Names of witnesses, a 
sergeant of police, and others, are appended. 



tZ COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

and disbelievers are still left to wrangle over him : 
they usually introduce a question of moral character. 
Now a few men of science in England like Dr. 
Gre,^ory about 1851, and like Dr. Carpenter, and 
a larger number on the continent, have examined 
and are examining these peculiarities. Their 
reports are often sufficiently astonishing to the lay 
mind. 

No doubt when, if ever, a very large and imposing 
body of these reports is presented by a cloud of 
scientific witnesses of esteemed reputation, then 
official science will give more time and study to 
the topic than it is at present inclined to bestow. 
Mr. Wallace has asserted that, 'whenever the scien- 
tific men of any age have denied, on a priori grounds, 
the facts of investigation, they have always been 
wrong '.' He adds that Galileo, Harvey, Jenner, 
Franklin, Young, and Arago, when he ' wanted 
even to discuss the subject of the electric telegraph,' 
were 'vehemently opposed by their scientific con- 
temporaries,' 'laughed at as dreamers,' 'ridiculed,' 
and so on, like the early observers of palaeolithic 
axes, and similar prehistoric remains. This is true, 
of course, but, because some correct ideas were 
laughed at, it does not follow that whatever is 
laughed at is correct. The squarers of the circle, 
the discoverers of perpetual motion, the inquirers 
into the origin of language, have all been ridiculed, 
and ruled out of court, the two former classes, 
at least, justly enough. Now officiai science appar- 
ently regards all the long and universally rumoured 
' Report of Dialectical Society, p. 85. 



INTRODUCTION. 13 

abnormal occurrences as in the same category with 
Keely's Motor, and Perpetual Motion, not as in 
the same category with the undulatory theory of 
light, or the theory of the circulation of the blood. 
Clairvoyance, or ghosts, or suspensions of the law of 
gravitation.arethings so widely contradictory of general 
experience and of ascertained laws, that they are pro- 
nounced to be impossible ; like perpetual motion 
they are not admitted to a hearing. 

As for the undeniable phenomenon that, in every j 
land, age, and condition of culture, and in every stage ' 
of belief or disbelief, some observers have persistently 
asserted their experience of these occurrences ; as 
for the phenomenon that the testimonies of Australian 
blacks, of Samoyeds, of Hurons, of Greeks, of Euro- 
pean peasants, of the Catholic and the Covenanting 
clergy, and of some scientifically trained modern 
physicians and chemists, are all coincident, official 
physical science leaves these things to anthropology 
and folk-lore. Yet the coincidence of such strange 
testimony is a singular fact in human nature. Even 
people of open mind can, at present, say no more 
than that there is a great deal of smoke, a puzz- 
ling quantity, if there be no fire, and that either 
human nature is very easily deluded by simple con- 
juring tricks, or that, in all stages of culture, minds 
are subject to identical hallucinations. The whole 
hocus-pocus of 'spirit-writing' on slates and in pellets 
of paper, has been satisfactorily exposed and explained, 
as a rather simple kind of Icgcr-de-main. But this 
was a purely modern sort of trickery ; the old uni- 
versal class of useless miracles, said to occur spon- 



T4 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

taneously, still presents problems of undeniable 
psychological interest. 

For example, if it be granted, as apparently it 
was by Dr. Carpenter, that, in certain circumstances, 
certain persons, wide awake, can perform, in various 
ways, intelligent actions, and produce intelligent ex- 
pressions automatically, without being conscious of 
what they are doing, then that fact is nearly as inter- 
esting and useful as the fact that we are descended 
from protozoa. Thus Dr. Carpenter says that, in 

( ' table-talking,' ' cases have occasionally occurred 
in the e-xperience of persons above suspicion of in- 
tentional deception, in which the answers given by the 
movements of tables were not only unknown to the 
questioners, but were even contrary to their belief at 

Uhe time, and yet afterwards proved to be true. Such 
cases afford typical examples of the doctrine of un- 
conscious cerebration, for in several of them it was 
capable of being distinctly shown that the answers, 
although contrary to the belief of the questioners at 
the time, were true to facts of which they had 
been formerly cognisant, but which had vanished 
from their recollection; the residua of these forgotten 
impressions giving rise to cerebral changes which 
prompted the responses without any consciousness 
on the part of the agents of the latent springs of their 
actions.' It is, apparently, to be understood that, 
as the existence of latent unconscious knowledge 
was traced in ' several ' cases, therefore the explana- 
tion held good in all cases, even where it could not be 
established as a fact. 

Let us see how this theory works out in practice. 



Smith, Jones, Brown and Robinson are sitting with 
their hands on a table. All. ex hypothesi, are honour- 
able men, 'above suspicion of intentional decep- 
tion'. They ask the table where Green is. Smith, 
Jones and Robinson have no idea. Brown firmly 
believes that Green is in Rome. The table begins to 
move, kicks and answers, by aid of an alphabet and 
knocks, that Green is at Machrihanish, where, on 
investigation, he is proved to be. Later, Brown is 
able to show (let us hope by documentary evidence), 
that he had heard Green was going to Machrihanish, 
instead of to Rome as he had intended, but this re- 
markable change of plans on Green's part had en- 
tirely faded from Brown's memory. Now we are to 
take it, ex hypothcsi, that Brown is the soul of honour, 
and, like Mr, Facey Rumford, ' wouldn't teil a lie if 
it was ever so'. The practical result is that, while 
Brown's consciousness informs him, trumpet-tongued, 
that Green is at Rome, ' the residue of a forgotten 
impression ' makes him (without his knowing it) wag 
the table, which he does not intend to do, and forces 
him to say through the tilts of the table, that Green 
is at Machrihanish, while he believes that Green is 
at Rome. 

The table-turners were laughed at, and many, 
if not all of them, deserved ridicule. But see 
how even this trivial superstition illuminates our 
knowledge of the human mind ! A mere residuum 
of a forgotten impression, a lost memory which , 
Brown would have sworn, in a court of justice, had ' 
never been in his mind at all, can work his muscles, 
while he supposes that they are not working, can 



i6 



< COMMON-SENSE. 



make a table move at which three other honourable 
men are sitting, and can tell all of them what none 
of them knows. Clearly the expedient of table-turning 
in coort might be tried by conscientious witnesses, 
who have forgotten the circumstances on which they 
are asked to give evidence. As Dr. Carpenter re- 
marks, quoting Mr. Lecky, 'our doctrine of uncon- 
scious cerebration inculcates toleration for differences 
not merely of belief, but of the moral standard '. 
And why not toleration for ' immoral ' actions ? If 
Brown's residuum of an impression can make Brown's 
muscles move a table to give responses of which he 
is ignorant, why should not the residuum of a for- 
gotten impression that it would be a pleasant thing 
to shoot Mr. Gladstone or Lord Salisbury, make 
Brown unconsciously commit that solecism ? It is a 
question of degree. At all events, if the unconscious 
self can do as much as Dr. Carpenter believed, we 
cannot tell how many other marvels it may perform; 
we cannot know till we investigate further. If this 
be so, it is, perhaps, hardly wise or scientific to taboo 
all investigation. If a mere trivial drawing-room 
amusement, associated by some with an absurd 'ani- 
mistic hypothesis,' can, when explained by Dr. Car- 
penter, throw such unexpectedly blinding light on 
human nature, who knows how much light may be 
obtained from a research into more serious and widely 
diffused superstitious practices? The research is, 
undeniably, beset with the most thorny of difficulties. 
Yet whosoever agrees with Dr. Carpenter must admit 
that, after one discovery so singular as ' unconscious 
cerebration," in its effect on tables, some one is bound 



INTRODUCTION. 17 

to go further in the same field, and try for more. We 
are assuming, for the sake of argument, the accuracy 
of Dr. Carpenter's facts/ 

More than twenty years ago an attempt was 
made by a body called the 'Dialectical Society,' to 
investigate the phenomena styled spiritualistic. This 
well-meant essay had most unsatisfactory results.^ 

First a committee of inquiry was formed, on the 
motion of Dr. Edmunds. The committee was hetero- 
geneous. Many of the names now suggest little to 
the reader. Mr. Bradlaugh we remember, but he 
chiefly attended a committee which sat with D. D. 
Home, and it is admitted that nothing of interest 
there occurred. Then we find the Rev. Maurice 
Davies, who was wont to write books of little dis- 
tinction on semi-religious topics. Mr. H. G. Atkinson 
was a person interested in mesmerism. Kisch, Moss, 
and Quelch, with Dyte and Isaac Meyers, Bergheim 
and Geary, Hannah, Hillier, Reed (their names go 
naturally in blank verse), were, doubtless, all most 
estimable men, but scarcely boast of scientific fame. 
Serjeant Cox, a believer in the phenomena, if not 
in their spiritual cause, was of the company, as was 
Mr. Jencken, who married one of the Miss Foxes, 
the first authors of modern thaumaturgy. Professor 
Huxley and Mr. G. H. Lewes were asked to join, but 
declined to march to Sarras, the spiritual city, with 

^ For ourselves, we have never seen or heard a table give any 
responses whatever, any more than we have seen the ghosts, heard 
the raps, or viewed the flights of men in the air which we chronicle 
in a later portion of this work. 

^Report on Spiritualism^ Longmans, London, 1871. 

2 



l8 COCK LANK AND COMMON-SENSE, 

the committee. This was neither surprising nor 
reprehensible, but Professor Huxley's letter of re- 
fusal appears to indicate that matters of interest, 
and, perhaps, logic, are differently understood by men 
of science and men of letters.^ He gave two 
reasons for refusing, and others may readily be 
imagined by the sympathetic obsei^ver. The first 
was that he had no time for an inquiry involving 
much trouble, and (as he justly foresaw) much an- 
noyance. Next, he had no interest in the subject. 
He had once examined a case of 'spiritualism,' and 
detected an imposture. ' But, supposing the pheno- 
mena to be genuine, they do not interest me. If any- 
body would endow me with the faculty of listening 
to the chatter of old women and curates in the 
nearest cathedral town, I should decline the privilege, 
having better things to do,' Thus it would not 
interest Professor Huxley if some new kind of tele- 
phone should enable him to hear all the conversation 
of persons in a town (if a cathedral town) more or 
less distant. He would not be interested by the 
'genuine ' fact of this extension of his faculties, because 
he would not expect to be amused or instructed by the 
contents of what he heard. Of course he was not in- 
vited to listen to a chatter, which, on one hypothesis, 
was that of the dead, but to help to ascertain whether 
or not there were any genuine facts of an unusual 
nature, which some persons explained by the animistic 
hypothesis. To mere ' bellettristic trifiers ' the exist- 
ence of genuine abnormal and une.xplained facts seems 
to have been the object of inquiry, and we must peni- 
'Reporl, p. Z29. 



INTRODUCTION. IQ 

» 

tently admit that if genuine communications could ^ 
really be opened with the dead, we would regard the 
circumstance with some degree of curious zest, even if 
the dead were on the intellectual level of curates and 
old women. Besides, all old women are not imbeciles, 
history records cases of a different kind, and even 
some curates are as intelligent as the apes, whose 
anatomy and customs, about that time, much occu- 
pied Professor Huxley. In Balaam's conversation with 
his ass, it was not so much the fact that mon dne 
parte bien which interested the prophet, as the cir- 
cumstance that mon dne parte. Science has obvi- 
ously soared very high, when she cannot be interested 
by the fact (if a fact) that the dead are communi- 
cating with us, apart from the value of what they 
choose to say. 

However, Professor Huxley lost nothing by not 
joining the committee of the Dialectical Society. 
Mr. G. H. Lewes, for his part, hoped that with 
Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace to aid (for he joined 
the committee) and with Mr. Crookes (who appar- 
ently did not) 'we have a right to expect some 
definite result '. Any expectation of that kind was 
doomed to disappointment. In Mr. Lewes's own ex- 
perience, which was large, * the means have always 
been proved to be either deliberate imposture ... or 
the well-known effects of expectant attention '. That 
is, when Lord Adare, the Master of Lindsay, and a 
cloud of other witnesses, thought they saw heavy 
bodies moving about of their own free will, either 
somebody cheated, or the spectators beheld what 
they did behold, because they expected to do so, 



20 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

even when, like M. Alphonse Karr, and Mr. Hamil- 
ton Aid^, they expected nothing of the kind. This 
would be Mr. Lewes's natural explanation of the 
circumstances, suggested by his own large experi- 
ence. 

The results of the Dialectical Society's inquiry 
were somewhat comic. The committee reported 
that marvels were alleged, by the experimental sub- 
committees, to have occurred. Sub-committee No. 
I averred that ' motion may be produced in solid 
bodies without material contact, by some hitherto 
unrecognised force'. Sub-committees 2 and 3 had 
many communications with mysterious intelligences 
to vouch for, and much erratic behaviour on the 
part of tables to record. No. 4 had nothing to re- 
port at all, and No. 5 which sat four times with 
Home had mere trifles of raps. Home was ill, and 
the seances were given up. 

So far, many curious phenomena were alleged 
to have occurred, but now Dr. Edmunds, who 
started the whole inquiry, sent in a separate report. 
He complained that convinced spiritualists had 
' captured ' the editing sub-committee, as people 
say, and had issued a report practically spiritualistic. 
He himself had met nothing more remarkable than 
impudent frauds or total failure. ' Raps, noises, 
and movements of various kinds,' he had indeed 
witnessed, and he heard wondrous tales from truth- 
ful people, ' but I have never been able to see any- 
thing worthy of consideration, as not being accounted 
for by unconscious action, delusion, or imposture '. 
Then the editors of the Report contradicted Dr. 



INTRODUCTION. 21 

Edmunds on points of fact, and Mr. A. R. Wallace 
disabled his logic/ and Mr. Geary dissented from 
the Report, and the editors said that his statements 
were incorrect, and that he was a rare attendant at 
seances, and Serjeant Cox vouched for more miracles, 
and a great many statements of the most astounding 
description were made by Mr. Varley, an electrician, 
by D. D. Home, by the Master of Lindsay (Lord 
Crawford) and by other witnesses who had seen Home 
gi'ow eight inches longer and also shorter than his 
average height ; fly in the air ; handle burning coals 
unharmed, cause fragrance of various sweet scents to 
fill a room, and, in short, rival St. Joseph of Cuper- 
tino in all his most characteristic performances. 
Unluckily Mr. Home, not being in the vein, did not 
one of these feats in presence of Mr. Bradlaugh and 
sub-committee No. 5. These results are clearly not 
of a convincing and harmonious description, and thus 
ended the attempt of the Dialectical Society. No- 
body can do otherwise than congratulate Professor 
Huxley and Mr. Lewes, on their discreet reserve. 
The inquiry of the Dialectical Society was a failure ; 

^ Mr. Wallace may be credited with scoring a point in argument. 
Dr. Edmunds had maintained that no amount of evidence would make 
him believe in certain obvious absurdities, say the lions in Trafalgar 
Square drinking out of the fountains. Mr. Wallace replied : * The 
asserted fact is either possible or not possible. If possible, such 
evidence as we have been considering would prove it ; if not possible, 
such evidence could not exist.' No such evidence exists for the lions ; 
for the phenomena of so-called spiritualism, we have consentient testi- 
mony in every land, period and stage of culture. That certainly 
makes a difference, whatever the weight and value of the difference 
may be. 



22 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

the members of the committees remained at variance ; 
and it is natural to side with the sceptics rather than 
with those who beUeved from the first, or were con- 
/■erted (as many are said to have been) during the 
ixperiments. Perhaps all such inquiries may end 
'.n no more than diversity of opinion. These practical 
vesearchea ought not to be attempted by the majority 
of people, if by any. On many nervous systems, the 
mere sitting idly round a table, and calling the process 
a seance, produces evil effects, 

.\s to the idea of purposely evolving the dead, it is 
at least as impious, as absurd, as odious to taste and 
sentiment, as it is insane in the eyes of reason. This 
protest the writer feels obliged to make, for while he 
regards the traditional, historical and anthropological 
curiosities here collected as matters of some interest, 
in various aspects, he has nothing but abhorrence 
and contempt for modern efforts to converse with the 
manes, and for all the profane impostures of ' spirit- 
ualism'. 

On the question of the real existence of the re- 
ported phenomena hereafter chronicled, and on the 
question of the portec of the facts, if genuine, the 
writer has been unable to reach any conclusion, 
. negative or affirmative. Even the testimony of his 
senses, if they ever bore witness to any of the apeciosa 
miracula, would fail to convince him on the afnrm- 
ative side. There seems to be no good reason why 
one observer should set so much store by his own 
impressions of sense, while he regards those of all 
other witnesses as fallible. On the other hand, the 
writer feels unable to set wholly aside the concurrent 



INTRODUCTION. 23 

testimony of the most diverse people, in times, lands 
and conditions of opinion the most various. The 
reported phenomena fall into regular groups, like 
the symptoms of a disease. Is it a disease of ob- 
servation ? If so, the topic is one of undeniable | T ^ 
psychological interest. To urge this truth, to pro- 
duce such examples as his reading affords, is the 
purpose of the author. « 

The topic has an historical aspect. In what 
sorts of periods, in what conditions of general thought 
and belief, are the alleged abnormal phenomena 
most current ? Every one will answer : In ages and 
lands of ignorance and superstitions ; or, again : In 
periods of religious, or, so to say, of irreligious crisis. 
As Mr. Lecky insists, belief in all such matters, from | 
fairies to the miracles of the Gospel, declines as 
rationalism or enlightenment advances. Yet it is 
not as Mr. Lecky says, before reason that they j 
vanish, not before learned argument and examination, 
but just before a kind of sentiment, or instinct, or 
feeling, that events contradictory of normal experience 
seem ridiculous, and incredible. 

Now, if we set aside, for the present, ecclesias- 
tical miracles, and judicial witchcraft, and fix our 
attention on such minor and useless marvels as 
claii*voyance, 'ghosts,' unexplained noises, unex- 
plained movements of objects, one doubts whether 
the general opinion as to the ratio of marvels and 
ignorance is correct. The truth is that we have 
often very scanty evidence. If we take Athens in 
her lustre, we are, undeniably, in an age of enlighten- 
ment, of the Aufklarung. No rationalistic, philo- 



24 



ND COMMON-SENSE. 



sopliica!, cool-headed contemporary of Middleton, of 
Hume, of Voltaire, could speak more contemptuously 
about ghosts, and about the immortality of the soul, 
than some of the Athenian gentlemen who converse 
with Socrates in the Dialogues. Yet we find that 
Socrates and Plato, men as well educated, as familiar 
with the refined enlightenment of Athens as the 
others, take to some extent the side of the old wives 
with their fables, and believe in earth-bound spirits 
of the dead. Again, the clear-headed Socrates, one 
of the pioneers of logic, credits himself with 'pre- 
monitions,' apparently with clairvoyance, and assur- 
edly with warnings which, in the then existing state 
of psychology, he could only regard as ' spiritual '. 
Hence we must infer that belief, or disbelief, does not 
depend on education, enlightenment, pure reason, 
but on personal character and genius. The same 
proportionate distribution of these is likely to recur 
in any age. 

Once more, Rome in the late Republic, the Rome 
of Cicero,- was ' enlightened,' as was the Greece of 
Lucian ; that is the educated classes were enlightened. 
Yet Lucretius, writing only for the educated classes, 
feels obliged to combat the belief in ghosts and the 
kind of Calvinism which, but for his poem, we should 
not know to have been widely prevalent. Lucian, too, 
mocks frequently at educated belief in just such 
minor and useless miracles as we are considering, but 
then Lucian lived in an age of cataclysm in religion. 
Looking back on history we find that most of histori- 
cal time has either been covered with dark ignorance, 
among savages, among the populace, or in all classes ; 



INTRODUCTION. 



25 



or, on the other Iiand. has been marked by enlighten- ' 
ment, which has produced, or accompanied, religious . , 

or irreligious crises. Now religious and irreligious -^ 
crises both tend to beget belief in abnormal occur- 1 
rences. Religion welcomes them as miracles divine I 
or diabolical. Scepticism produces a reaction, and | 
'where no gods are spectres walk'. Thus men cannot, 
or, so far, men have not been able to escape from the 
conditions in which marvels flourish. If we are 
savages, then Vuis and Brewin beset the forest paths 
and knock in the lacustrine dwelling perched like a 
nest on reeds above the water ; tomaks rout in the 
Eskimo hut, in the open wood, in the gunyeh, in the 
Medicine Lodge. If we are European peasants, 
we hearthe Brownie at work, and see the fairies dance 
in their grassy ring. If we are devoutly Catholic we 
behold saints floating in mid-air, or we lay down 
our maladies and leave our crutches at Lourdes. 
If we are personally religious, and pass days in 
prayer, we hear voices lilie Bunyan ; see visions like 
the brave Colonel Gardiner or like Pascal ; walk 
environed by an atmosphere of light, like the seers' 
in Iamblichus,and like Mrs. Carlyle's ancestor, Welsh, 
the son-in-law of Ivnox. We are attended by a virtuous 
sprite who raps and moves tables as was a pious man 
mentioned by Bodin and a minister cited by Wodrow. 
We work miracles and prophesy, like Mr. Blair of 
St. Andrews (i63g-i562); we are clairvoyant, like 
Mr. Cameron, minister of Lochend, or Loch-Head, in 
Kintyre (1679). If we are dissolute, and irreligious 
like Lord Lyttelton, or like Middleton, that enemy 
of Covenanters, we see ghosts, as they did, and have 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

premonitions. If we live in a time of witty scepti- 
cism, we take to the magnetism of Mesmer. If we 
exist in a period of learned and scientific scepticism, 
and are ourselves trained observers, we may stiU 
watch the beliefs of Mr. Wallace and the experiments 
witnessed by Mr. Crookes and Dr. Huggins. 

Say we are Protestants, and sceptical, like Reginald 
Scot (1584), or Whigs, like De Foe, we then exclaim 
with Scot, in his Discovery of Witchcraft (1584), that 
minor miracles, moving tables, have gone out with be- 
nighted Popery, as De Foe also boasts in his History 
of the Devil. Alas, of the table we must admit eppjir 
si mtiove; it moves, or is believed by foreign savants 
to move.for a peasant medium, Eusapia Paladino. Mr. 
Lecky declares (1865) that Church miracles have fol- 
lowed Hop o' my Thumb ; they are lost, with no 
track of white pebbles, in the forest of Rationalism.^ 
And then Lourdes comes to contradict his expectation, 
and Church miracles are as common as blackberries. 
Eufin, mankind, in the whole course of its history, 
has never got quit of experiences which , whatever their 
cause, drive it back on the belief in the mar\-ellous.^ 



'This illustration is not Mr. Lecky's. 

^ We have here thrown together a crowd of odd experiences. 
The savages' examples are dealt with in the next essay ; the Catholic 
marvels in the essay on ' Comparative Psychical Kesearch '. For 
Pascal, consult L'AmuUtU de Pascal, by M. LSlut; for lamblichus, 
see eEsay on 'Ancient Spiritualism'. As to Welsh, the evidence 
for the light in which he shone is printed in Dr. Hill Burton's Scot 
Abroad (i 289), from a Wodrow MS. in Glasgow University. Mr. 
Welsh was minister of Ayr. He was meditating in his garden late 
at night. One of his friends ' chanced to open a window towards 
the place wliere he walked, and saw clearly a strange light surround 



J 



INTRODUCTION. 27 

It is a noteworthy circumstance that (setting 
apart Church miracles, and the epidemic of witch- 
craft which broke out simultaneously with the new 
learning of the Renaissance, and was fostered by the 
enlightened Protestantism of the Reformers, the Puri- 
tans, and the Covenanters, in England, Scotland 
and America) the minor miracles, the hauntings 
and knockings, are not more common in one age 
than in another. Our evidence, it is true, does not 
quite permit us to judge of their frequenc}' at 
certain periods. The reason is obvious. We have 
no newspapers, no miscellanies of daily life, from 
Greece, Rome, and the Middle Ages. We have 
from Greece and Rome but few literary examples 
of * Psychical Research,' few collections of books 
on * Bogles ' as Scott called them. We possess 
Palsephatus, the life of Apollonius of Tyana, jests 
in Lucian, argument and exposition from Pliny, 
Porphyry, lamblichus, Plutarch, hints from Plato, 
Plautus, Lucretius, from St. Augustine and other 
fathers. Suetonius chronicles noises and hauntings 
after the death of Caligula, but, naturally, the his- 

him, and heard him speak strange words about his spiritual joy*. 
Hill Burton thinks that this verges on the Popish superstition. The 
truth is that eminent ministers shared the privileges of Mediums and 
of some saints. Examples of miraculous cures by ministers, of 
clairvoyance on their part, of spirit-raps attendant on them, and of 
prophecy, are current in Presbyterian hagiology. No ministers, to 
our knowledge, were * levitated,' but some nearly flew out of their 
pulpits. Patrick Walker, in his Biographia Preshyteriana, vol. ii. p. 21, 
mentions a supernatural light which floated round The Sweet Singers, 
Meikle John Gibb and his friends, before they burned a bible. Mr. 
Gibb afterwards excelled as a pow-wow, or Medicine Man, among 
the Red Indians. 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

torian does not record similar disturbances in the 
paupcriim-tabernacE. 

Classical evidence on these matters, as about 
Greek and Roman folk-lore in general, we have to 
sift painfully from the works of literary authors who 
were concerned with other topics. Still, in the 
region of the ghostly, as in folk-lore at large, we 
have relics enough to prove that the ancient prac- 
tices and beliefs were on the ordinary level of to-day 
and of all days : and to show that the ordinary 
numbers of abnormal phenomena were supposed to 
be present in the ancient civilisations. In the Middle 
Ages — the 'dark ages' — modem opinion would ex- 
pect to find an inordinate quantity of ghostly material. 
But modern opinion would be disappointed. Setting 
aside saintly miracles, and accusations of witchcraft, 
the minor phenomena are very sparsely recorded. 
In the darkest of all 'dark ages,' when, on the 
current hypothesis, such tales as we examine ought 
to be most plentiful, even witch-triais are infrequent, 
Mr. Lecky attributes to these benighted centuries 
' extreme superstition, with little terrorism, and, 
consequently, little sorcery ', The world was capable 
of believing anything, but it believed in the antidote 
as well as in the bane, in the efficacy of holy water 
as much as in the evil eye. When, with the dawn 
of enlightenment in the twelfth centurj-, superstition 
became cruel, and burned witch and heretic, the 
charges against witches do not, as a rule, include the 
phenomena which we are studying. Witches are 
accused of raising storms, destroying crops, causing 
deaths and blighting marriages, by sympathetic 



J 




magic ; of assaasaii:^ lio: ^ap» of Vgr^rr^ n: isErinr 
intercoui^e with Saia"*,, cc anisicins^ t^ae: >g"riTgr> i^ 
these £ahles. excqjc lie Hasr. sr^ smrrrz^ fraiL israri 
beliefs, but ncaac od" liesc Ddrzrrrscss sr* £n«5is£ 
by modem wh3acss£s of 2I] bdt:^ ^'g i5^ ^knrcii:- 
ings/ ' mofv^easaesstsu' '^ifisss-" --irr^Erzs-' "fienicir 

sight,' and rla "r% t- xv-3t-tr>>^ 

1 ne roofe pan ot z^sCLatTz^ "wnrsiincii- iirsrsi^ir*;. 
is not qucd irmspsr^ ^p^f^ imx^ pad set inrstrJiruL. 
The £acts weit ii*cis: z^::jpjt tszI}t f3i£i zjc -st^ri 
sterile. ficKrks saiJKTEaL 
were mined: liie Tn^krsf.-! 
things to witc^^czafL Or tte vrhfr "ns^tf, tib*: ic:i* 
of lappings, gbcjsis. rrg"- - \ ' jA '^ n r :£ , r: sect* vc tie 
universally coasen*5en eriififnrff^.. ZTt T»rr o:i::jxf£; 
facts after alL TireEr tjfstfsre hs^ ti rat estdbiiiizef 
before we loc^ aboct icsr ijisfr rsTT^r Ntnr- ^rsiiirii 
aboot ttesi- pfeescar-fira tbt MioSf: Ag*s -prjiztzx: bm 
a very scanty scpjSy. Tbc nErziiJt:* wrrci -^^sri ic 
commcm were seldcsii cc li5$ ifrDC: tibsr v*z*: fr> 
posing visaoos rf dsrBs. tjr tx sr.pik, ^r tt ^sirt* : 
processicHis of hapgsy or mtsjcy ^xfzl^z Tknr^ of 
heaven, helL or pEir^siory- Titt: rEa.«ar 5* liot sr to 
seek: ecdesaasdcal ciaxararrigrs, '£kt z^zsstxzl nxsc: 
of letters, recofded evejois wiDiih ri:t*:rEs:*£ tbsir:' 
selves ; a wnith, or DgmTn-op sxissi ' n^ti^r or ^fsfly 
experience," says La^Ttiemsu anf- laisr- D:ctr^c:ct.s 
himself*, or iaaockEia^ sp r l ' j t^ sr^'i^ bt:ri££i2: tbtrfr 
notice. In mediaeval scxcjCcs wt n^ec:: * inr trcf- 
5nng wraiths and gfocsls, lemn-frig ir ^b&Dit=ire to 
a compact made while in the body. Htn^ ard ihtz^ 
a chnmicle, as erf Riid<^ of F^ilda 55$j, vcnocbe^ 



30 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

for communication with a rapping bogle. Grimm has 
collected several cases under the head of ' House- 
sprites,' including this ancient one at Capmunti. near 
Bingen.' Gervase of Tilbury, Marie de France, John 
Major, Froissart, mention an occasional /y/Zfi, brownie, 
or knocking sprite. The prayers of the Church contain 
a petition against the spiritus percuiiens, or spirit who 
produces 'percussive noises'. The Norsemen of the 
Viking age were given to second sight, and Glam 
'riding the roofs,' made disturbances worthy of a 
spectre pecuUarly able-bodied. But, not counting 
the evidence of the Icelandic sagas, mediaeval litera- 
ture, like classical literature, needs to be carefully 
sifted before it yields a few grains of such facts as 
sane and educated witnesses even now aver to be 
matter of their personal experience. No doubt the 
beliefs were prevalent, the Latin prayer proves that, 
but examples were seldom recorded. 

Thus the dark ages do nol, as might have been 
expected, provide us with most of this material. 
The last forty enlightened years give us more 
bogles than all the ages between St. Augustine 
and the Restoration. When the dark ages were 
over, when learning revived, the learned turned 
their minds to ' Psychical Research,' and Wier, 
Bodin, Le Loyer, Georgius Pictorius, Petrus 
Thyraeus, James VI., collected many instances of 
the phenomena still said to survive. Then, for want 
of better materials, the unhappy, tortured witches 
into their confessions all the folk-lore which 

D'lic Mythology, English translation, vol. ii. p. 5IH. He cites 



INTRODUCTION. 

they knew. Second sight, the fairy world, ghosts, 
' wraiths,' ' astrai bodies ' of witches whose body 
of flesh is elsewhere, volatile chairs and tables, all 
were spoken of by witches under torture, and by 
sworn witnesses.' Resisting the scepticism of the 
Restoration. Glanvil, More, Boyle, and the rest, 
fought the Sadducee with the usual ghost stories. 
Wodrow, later (1701-1731), compiled the marvels of 
his A nalccia. In spite of the cold common-sense of 
the eighteenth century, sporadic outbreaks of rap- 
pings and feats of impulsive pots, pans, beds and 
chairs insisted on making themselves notorious. 
The Wesley case would never have been celebrated 
if the sons of Samuel Wesley had not become pro- 
minent, John Wesley and the Methodists revelled 
in such narratives, and so the catena of testimonies 
was lengthened till Mesmercaroe, and, with Mesmer, 
the hypothesis of a ' fluidic force' which in various 
shapes has endured, and is not, even now, wholly 
extinct. Finally Modem Spiritualism arrived, and 
was, for the most part, an organised and fraudulent 
copy of the old popular phenomena, with a few cheap 
and vulgar variations on the theme. ' 

In the face of these facts, it does not seem easy I 
to aver that one kind of age, one sort of ' culture ' is | 
more favourable to the occurrence of, or belief in, 
these phenomena than another. Accidental circum- 
stances, an increase, or a decrease of knowledge ; 

'A very early turning table, of 1170, is quoted fiom Giraldua 
CambienBiB by Dean Stanley in his Caiilcrbuty Memorials, p. 103. 
The table ihtew off the aims of Beckel's murderers. This was at 
SODth Mailing. See the original In'VJiiailon'a Anglia Sacra, ii. 425. 



32 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

and education, an access of religion, or of irreligion, 
a fashion in intellectual temperament, may bring 
these experiences more into notice at one moment 
than at another, but they are always said to recur, at 
uncertain intervals, and are always essentially the 
same. 

To prove this by examples is our present business. 
In a thoroughly scientific treatise, the foundation of 
the whole would, of course, be laid in a discussion of 
psychology, physiology, and the phenomena of hyp- 
notism. But on these matters an amateur opinion is 
of less than no value. The various schools of psycho- 
logists, neurologists, * alienists,* and employers of 
hypnotism for curative or experimental purposes, 
appear to differ very widely among themselves, and 
the layman may read but he cannot criticise their 
works. The essays which follow are historical, an- 
thropological, antiquarian. 



33 



SAVAGE SPIRITUALISM. 

* Shadow^ or Magic of the Dlrih Hareskins : its four cate- 

gories. These are characteristic of all Savage Spiritual- 
ism, The subject somewhat neglected by Anthropologists. 
Uniformity of phenomena. Mr. Tylor's theory of the 
origin of * Animism \ Question whether there are any 
phenomena not explained by Mr, Tylors theory. Ex- 
amples of uniformity. The savage hypnotic trance. 
Hareskin examples. Cases from British Guiana. 
Australian rapping spirits. Maori oracles. A Maori 
^ siance\ The North American Indian Magic Lodge. 
Modern and old Jesuit descriptions. Movements of the 
Lodge. Insensibility of Red Indian Medium to fire. 
Similar case of D. D. Home, Flying table in Thibet, 
Other instances. Montezuma^ s ^astral body \ Miracles. 
Question of Diffusion by borrowing, or of independent 
evolution. 

Philosophers among the Dene Hareskins in the 
extreme north of America recognise four classes of 

* Shadow ' or magic. Their categories apply suf- 
ficiently closely to all savage sorcery (excluding sym- 
pathetic magic), as far as it has been observed. We 
have, among the Hareskins : — 

1. Beneficent magic, used for the healing of the 
sick. 

2. Malevolent magic : the black art of witchcraft. 

3 



3- Conjuring, or the working of merely sportive 
miracles. 

4. Mag;ic for ascertaining the truth about the 
future or the distant present — clairvoyance. This is 
called 'The Young Man Bound and Bounding,' 
from the widely-spread habit of tying-up the Hmbs of 
the medium, and from his customary convulsions. 

To all of these forms of magic, or spiritualism, 
the presence and aid of ' spirits ' is believed to be 
necessary, with, perhaps, the exception of the spor- 
tive or conjuring class. A spirit helps to cure and 
helps to kill. The free spirit of the clairvojant in 
bondage meets other spirits in its wanderings. An- 
thropologists, taking it for granted that ' spirits ' are 
a mere 'animistic hypothesis' — their appearances 
being counterfeited by imposture^bavc paid little 
attention to the practical magic of savages, as far as 
it is not merely sympathetic, and based on the doc- 
trine that ' like cures like '. 

Thus Mr. Sproat, in his excellent work, Scenes 
and Studies of Savage Life, frankly admits that in 
Vancouver Island the trickery and hocus-pocus of 
Aht sorcery were so repugnant to him that he could 
not occupy himself with the topic. Some other 
travellers have been more inquisitive ; unlettered 
sojourners among the wilder peoples have shared 
their superstitions, and consulted their oracles, while 
one or two of the old Jesuit missionaries were close 
and puzzled observers of their ' mediumship '. 

Thus enough is known to show that savage 
spiritualism wonderfully resembles, even in minute 
details, that of modem mediums and seames, while 






SAVAGE SPIRITUALISM. 35 

both have the most striking parallels in the old 
classical thaumaturgy. 

This uniformity, to a certain extent, is not sur- \ 
prising, for savage, classical, and modern spiritualism | 
all repose on the primaeval animistic hypothesis as 
their metaphysical foundation. The origin of this 
hypothesis — namely, that disembodied intelligences \ 
exist and are active — is explained by anthropologists \ 
as the result of early reasonings on life, death, sleep, [ 
dreams, trances, shadows, the phenomena of epilepsy, 
and the illusions of starvation. This scientific theory * 
is, in itself, unimpeachable ; normal phenomena, \ 
psychological and physical, might suggest most of 
the animistic beliefs.^ 

At the same time 'veridical hallucinations,' if there 
are any, and clairvoyance, if there is such a thing, 
would do much to originate and confirm the animistic 
opinions. Meanwhile, the extraordinary similarity 
of savage and classical spiritualistic rites, with the 
corresponding similarity of alleged modern pheno- 
mena, raises problems which it is more easy to state 
than to solve. For example, such occurrences as 
*rappings,' as the movement of untouched objects, 
as the lights of the seance room, are all easily feigned. . 
But that ignorant modern knaves should feign pre- | 
cisely the same raps, lights, and movements as the J 
most remote and unsophisticated barbarians, and as ' 
the educated Platonists of the fourth century after ' 
Christ, and that many of the other phenomena should : 
be identical in each case, is certainly noteworthy. This 

^ See Mr. Tylor*s Primitive Culture^ chap, xi., for the best state- 
ment of the theory. 



36 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

kind of folk-lore is the most persistent, the most apt 
to revive, and the most uniform. We have to decide 
between the theories of independent invention; of 
transmission, borrowing, and secular tradition; and 
of a substratum of actual fact. 

Thus, either the rite of binding the sorcerer was 
invented, for no obvious reason, in a given place, and 
thence reached the Australian blacks, the Eskimo, 
the D^ne Hareskins, the Davenport Brothers, and 
the Neoplatonists; or it was independently evolved 
in each of several remote regions ; or it was found to 
have some actual effect — what we cannot guess — on 
persons entranced. We are hampered fay not know- 
ing, in our comparatively rational state of develop- 
ment, what strange things it is natural for a savage 
to invent, That spirits should knock and rap seems 
to us about as improbable an idea as could well occur 
to the fancy. Were we inventing a form for a 
spirit's manifestations to take, we never should in- 
vent that. But what a savage might think an 
appropriate invention we do not know. Meanwhile 
we have the mediteval and later tales of rapping, 
some of which, to be frank, have never been satis- 
factorily accounted for on any theory. But, on the 
other hand, each of us might readily invent another 
common 'manifestation' — the mnd which is said 
to accompany the spirit. 

The very word spiritus suggests air in motion, 
and the very idea of abnormal power suggests the 
trembling and shaking of the place wherein it is 
present. Yet, on the other side, the 'cold non-natural 
wind' of seances, of Swedenborg, and of a hundred 



SAVAGE SPIRtTUALlSM. 



37 



stories, old or new, is undeniably felt by some 
sceptical observers, even on occasions where no 
proressional charlatan is engaged. As to the 
trembling and shaking of the house or hut, where 
the spirit is alleged to be, we shall examine some 
curious evidence, ancient and modem, savage and 
civilised. So of the other phenomena. Some seem 
to be of easy natural invention, others not so; and, 
in the latter case, independent evolution of an idea 
not obvious is a difficult hypothesis, while trans- 
mission from the Pole to Australia, though conceiv- 
able, is apt to give rise to doubt. 

Meanwhile, one phenomenon, which is usually 
said to accompany others much more startling, may 
now be held to have won acceptance from science. 
This is what the Dene Hareskins call the Sleep of the 
Skadoia, that is, the Magical Sleep, the hypnotic 
trance. Savages are well acquainted with this 
abnormal condition, and with means of producing it, 
and it is at the bottom of all their more mysterious 
non-sympathetic magic, before Mesmer, and even I 
till within the last thirty years, this phenomenon, j 
too, would have been scouted ; now it is a common- 
place of physiology. For such physical symptoms ii 
as introverted eyes in seers we need look no further ' 
than Martin's account of the second-sighted men, in 
his book on the Hebrides. The phenomenon of 
anEesthesia, insensibility to pain, in trance, is not 
unfamiliar to science, but that red-hot coals should 
not burn a seer or medium is, perhaps, less easily 
accepted ; while science, naturally, does not recog- 
nise the clairvoyance, and still less the 'spiritual' 



^m 



38 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

attendants of the seer in the Sleep of the Shadow. 
Nevertheless, classical, modern, and savage spiritual- 
ists are agreed in reporting these last and most 
startling phenomena of the magic slumber in certain 
cases. 

Beginning with what may be admitted as pos- 
sible, we find that the D^ne Hareskins practise a 
form of healing under hypnotic or mesmeric treat- 
ment.' The physician (who is to be pitied) begins 
by a three days' fast. Then a 'magic lodge,' 
afterwards to be described, is built for him in the 
forest. Here he falls into the Sleep of the Shadow ; 
the patient is then brought before him. In the 
lodge, the patitnt confesses his sins to his doctor, 
and when that ghostly friend has heard all, he 
sings and plays the tambour, invoking the spirit 
to descend on the sick man. The singing of bar- 
barous songs was part of classical spiritualism ; 
the Norse witch, in The Saga of Eric the Red, in- 
sisted on the song of Warlocks being chanted, 
which secured the attendance of ' many powerful 
spirits ' ; and modern spiritualists enliven their 
dark and dismal programme by songs. Presently 
the Hareskin physician blows on the patient, 
and bids the malady quit him. He also makes 
' passes ' over the invalid till he produces trance ; 
the spirit is supposed to assist. Then the spirit 
extracts the sin which caused the suffering, and 
the illness is cured, after the patient has been 
awakened by a loud cry. In all this affair of con- 
fession one is inclined to surmise a mixture of 

' Petitot, Traditions Indtenncs rfii Canada Nord-Ouesl, p. 434. 



SAVAGE SPIRITUALISM. 39 

Catholic practice, imitated from the missionaries. 
It is also not, perhaps, impossible that hypnotic 
treatment may occasionally have been of some real 
service. 

Turning to British Guiana, where, as elsewhere, 
hysterical and epileptic people make the best me- 
diums, or * Peay-men,' we are fortunate in finding an 
educated observer who submitted to be peaied. Mr. 
Im Thurn, in the interests of science, endured a 
savage form of cure for headache. The remedy was 
much worse than the disease. In a hammock in the 
dark, attended by a peay-man armed with several 
bunches of green boughs, Mr. Im Thurn lay, under 
a vow not to touch whatever might touch him. The 
peay-men kept howling questions to the kenaimas, or 
spirits, who answered. * It was a clever piece of 
ventriloquism and acting.' 

* Every now and then, through the mad din, 
there was a sound, at first low and indistinct, and 
then gathering in volume, as if some big, winged 
thing came from far towards the house, passed 
through the roof, and then settled heavily on the 
floor; and again, after an interval, as if the same 
winged thing rose and passed away as it had come,' 
while the air was sensibly stirred. A noise of 
lapping up some tobacco-water set out for the 
kenaimas was also audible. The rustling of wings, 
and the thud, * were imitated, as I afterwards found, 
by skilfully shaking the leafy boughs, and then 
dashing them suddenly against the ground '. Mr. 
Im Thurn bit one of the boughs which came close 
to his face, and caught leaves in his teeth. As a 



40 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

rule he lay in a condition scarcely conscious: 'It 
seems to me that my spirit was as neariy separated 
from my body as is possible in any circumstances 
short of death. Thus it appears that the efforts of 
the peay-man were directed partly to the separation 
of his own spirit from his body, and partly to the 
separation of the spirit from the body of his patient, 
and that in this way spirit holds communion with 
spirit." But Mr. Im Thurn's headache was not 
alleviated ! The whirring noise occurs in the case 
of the Cock Lane Ghost (1762), in lamblichus, in 
some ' haunted houses,' and is reported by a modem 
lady spiritualist in a book which provokes sceptical 
comments. Now, had the peay tradition reached 
Cock Lane, or was the peay-man counterfeiting, 
very cleverly, some real phenomenon?^ 

We may next examine cases in which, the savage 
medium being entranced, spirits come to him and 
answer questions. Australia is so remote, and it is 
so unlikely that European or American spiritualists 
suggested their ideas to the older blacks (for medium- 
ship seems to be nearly extinct since the settling of 
the country), that any transmission of such notions 
to the Black Fellows must be very ancient. Our 
authorities are Mr. Brough Smyth, in Aborigines of 
Victoria (i. 472), and Messrs. Fison and Howitt, in 
Kamilaroi and Kurnai, who tell just the same tale. 
The spirits in Victoria are called Mrarts, and are 





'Very possibly the 


whirring ro 


ir Of the 


iiriidmi, 


or !,ioJi« 


in 


Gieek, 


Zuni. Yoruba, 




Maori a 


d South 


African mys- 


ter 


es i 


connected with this behef 


in a whi 


ring sou 


nd caused by 


spL 


LtB, 


See Ciiilom a 


d Myih. 











SAVAGE SPIKITtlALISM. 4I 

understood to be the aouls of Biack Fellows dead 
and gone, not demons unattached. The mediums, 
now very scarce, are Birraarks. They were con- 
sulted as to things present and future. The Bir- 
raark leaves the camp, the fire is kept low, and some 
one 'cooees' at intervals. 'Then a noise is heard. 
The narrator here struck a book against the table 
several times to describe it.' This, of course, is 
'spirit-rapping'. The knocks have a home among 
the least cultivated savages, as well as in mediaeval 
and modern Europe. Then whistles are heard, a 
phenomenon lavishly illustrated in certain seances 
held at Rio de Janeiro ' where children were mediums. 
The spiritual whistle is familiar to Glanvil and to 
Homer, Mr. Wesley, at Epworth (1716), noted it 
among all the other phenomena. The Mrarts are 
ne.tt heard 'jumping down,' like the kenaimas. 
Questions are put to them, and they answer. They 
decline, very naturally, to approach a bright fire. 
The medium (Birraark) is found entranced, either 
on the ground where the Mrarts have been talking, 
or at the top of a tree, veiy difficult to climb, ' and 
up which there are no marks of any one having 
climbed". The blacks, of course, are peculiarly 
skilled in detecting such marks. In maleficent 
magic, as among the Dene Hareskins, the Australian 
sorcerer is tied up, ' his head, body, and limbs wound 
round with stringy bark cords'.'' The enchantment 
is believed to drag the victim, in a trance, towards the 
sorcerer. This binding is customary among the 
Eskimo, and, as Mr. Myers has noted, was used in 
' Proc. S. P. R., xix. 180. = Btough Smyth, i. 475. 



42 COCK LANF ANIl COMMON-SENSE. 

the rites described by tht OraclcK in ' trance utter- 
ances,' which Porphyry collected in the fourth cen- 
tury. Whether the binding was thought to restrain 
the convulsions of the mediums, or whether it was, 
originally, a 'test condition,' to prevent the medium 
from cheating (as in modern experiments), we cannot 
discover. It does not appear to be in use among the 
Maoris, whose speciality is ' trance utterance ". 

A very picturesque description of a Maori seance 
is given in Old New Zealand.^ The story loses greatly 
by being condensed. A popular and accomplished 
young chief had died in battle, and his friends asked 
the Toktmga, or medium, to call him back. The 
chief was able to read and write; he had kept a 
journal of remarkable events, and that journal, though 
' unceasingly searched for,' had disappeared. This 
was exactly a case for a test, and that which was 
given would have been good enough for spiritualists, 
though not for more reasonable human beings. In 
the village hall, in flickering firelight, the friends, 
with the English observer, the ' Pakeha Maori,' 
were collected. The medium, by way of a ' cabinet,' 
selected the darkest corner. The fire burned down 
to a red glow. Suddenly the spirit spoke, ' Saluta- 
tion to my tribe,' and the chief's sister, a beautiful 
girl, rushed, with open arms, into the darkness ; she 
was seized and held by her friends. The gloom, 
the tears, the sorrow, nearly overcame the incredulity 
of the Englishman, as the Voice came, ' a strange 
melancholy sound, like the sound of a wind blowing 
into a hollow vessel '. ' It is well with me,' it said; 
' Auckland, 1SG3, ch. x, 



SAVAGE SPIRITUALISM. 43 

' my place is a good place.' They asked of their 
dead friends ; the hollow answers replied, and the 
Englishman *felt a strange swelling of the chest'. 
The Voice spoke again : * Give my large pig to the 
priest,' and the sceptic was disenchanted. He now 
thought of the test. * " We cannot find your book," 
I said; ** where have you concealed it?" The 
answer immediately came : *' Between the Tahiihu of 
my house and the thatch, straight over you as you 
go into the door".' Here the brother rushed out. 
* In five minutes he came back, with the book in his 
hand' After one or two more remarks the Voice 
came, * ** Farewell ! " from deep beneath the ground. 
" Farewell ! " again from high in air, ** Farewell ! " 
once more came moaning through the distant dark- 
ness of the night. The deception was perfect. ** A 
ventriloquist," said 1, ^' or— or y perhaps the devil."' 
The seance had an ill end : the chiefs sister shot 
herself. 

This was decidedly a well-got-up affair for a 
colonial place. The Maori oracles are precisely like 
those of Delphi. In one case a chief was absent, 
was inquired for, and the Voice came, * He will 
return, yet not return '. Six months later the chief's 
friends went to implore him to come home. They 
brought him back a corpse ; they had found him 
dying, and carried away the body. In another case, 
when the Maori oracle was consulted as to the issue 
of a proposed war, it said : * A desolate country, a 
desolate country, a desolate country ! ' The chiefs, 
of course, thought the other country was meant, but 
they were deceived, as Croesus was by Delphi, when 



44 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE, 

he was told that he 'would ruin a gi^eat empire'. In 
yet another case, the Maoris were anxious for the 
spirits to bring back a European ship, on which a 
gir! had fied with the captain. The Pakeha Maori 
was present at this seance, and heard the ' hollow, 
mysterious whistling Voice, "The ship's nose I will 
batter out on the {^eat sea"'. Even the priest was 
puzzled ; this, he said, was clearly a deceitful spirit, 
or atua, like those of which Porphyry complains, like 
most of them in fact. But, ten days later, the ship 
came back to port ; she had met a gale, and sprung 
a leak in the bow, called, in Maori, 'the nose' {ihu). 
It is hardly surprising that some Europeans used to 
consult the oracle. 

Possibly some spiritualists may take comfort in 
these anecdotes, and allege that the Maori mediums 
were 'very powerful '. This is said to have been the 
view taken by some American believers, in a very 
curious case, reported by Kohl, but the tale, as he 
tells it, cannot possibly be accurate. However, it 
illustrates and strangely coincides with some stories 
related by the Jesuit, P^re Lejeune, in the Canadian 
Mission, about 1637. The instances bear both on 
clairvoyance and on the force which is said to shake 
houses as well as to lift tables, in the legends of the 
modern thaumaturgists. We shall take Kohl's tale 
before those of the old Jesuit. Kohl first describes 
the ' Medicine Lodge,' already alluded to in the 
account of D6ne Hareskin magic. 

The 'lodge' answers to what spiritualists call 
' the cabinet,' usually a place curtained off in modern 
practice, Behind this the medium now gets up his 



SAVAGE SPIRITUALISM, 45 

' materialisations,' and other cheap mysteries. The 
classical performers of the fourth century also knew 
the advantage of a close place, ^ ' where the power 
would not be scattered'. This idea is very natural, 
granting the 'power'. The modern Ojihway 'close 
place,' or lodge, like those seen by old Jesuit fathers, 
'is composed of stout posts, connected with basket- 
work, and covered with birch bark. It is tall and 
narrow, and resembles a chimney. It is verj' firmly 
built, and two men, even if exerting their utmost 
strength, would be unable to move, shake, or bend 
it."' On this topic Kohl received information from a 
gentleman who ' knew the Indians well, and was 
even related to them through his wife '. He, and 
many other white people thirty years before, saw a 
Jossakvcd, or medium, crawl into such a lodge as Kohl 
describes, beating his tambour. 'The entire case began 
gi^adually trembling, shaking, and oscillating slowly 
amidst great noise. ... It bent back and forwards, up 
and down, like the mast of a vessel in a storm. I could 
not understand how those movements could be pro- 
duced by a man inside, as we could not have caused 
them from the exterior.' Two voices, 'both entirely 
different," were then heard within. ' Some spirit- 
ualists ' (here is the weakest part of the story) 
'who were present explained it through modern 
spiritualism.' Now this was not before 1859, when 
Kohl's book appeared in English, and modem spirit- 
ualism, as a sect of philosophy, was not born till 
1848, so that, thirty years before 1859, in 1829, there 

' tr To-i iTTtfiif x^pWi iSiTTt tiii iraiofJi iiaxtieSau — laroblichus. 

' Kohl, Kiuhi-Gami, p. 278. 



were no modem spiritualists. This, then, is absurd. 
However, the tale goes on, and Kohl's informant 
says that he knew the Jossakecd, or medium, who had 
become a Christian. On his deathhed the white man 
asked him how it was done: 'now is the time to 
confess all truthfully'. The converted one admitted 
the premisses — he was dying, a Christian man — but, 
' Believe me, I did not deceive you at that time. I 
did not move the lodge. It was shaken by the power 
of the spirits. I could see a great distance round 
me, and believed I could recognise the most distant 
objects.' This ' with an expression of simple truth '. 
It is interesting, but the interval of thirty years is 
a naked impossibility. In 1S29 thert: were queer 
doings in America. Joe Smith's Mormons ' spoke 
with tongues,' like Irving's congregation at the same 
time, but there were no modern spiritualists. Kohl's 
informant should have said ' ten years ago,' if he 
wanted bis anecdote to be credited, and it is curious 
that Kohl did not notice this circumstance. 

We now come to the certainly honest evidence 
of the Pere Lejeune, the Jesuit missionary. In the 
Relations de la Nouvdls France (1634), Lejeune dis- 
cusses the sorcerers, who, as rival priests, gave him 
great trouble. He describes the Medicine Lodge 
just as Kohl does. The fire is put out, of course, 
the sorcerer enters, the lodge shakes, voices are 
heard in Montagnais and Algonkin, and the Father 
thought it all a clumsy imposture. The sorcerer, in 
a very sportsmanlike way, asked him to go in him- 
self and try what he could make of it. ' You'll find 
that your body remains below and your soul mounts 



SAVAGE SPIRITUALISM, 

aloft.' The cautious Father, reflecting that there 
were no white witnesses, declined to make the ex- 
periment. This lodge was larger than those which 
Kohl saw, and would have held half a dozen men. 
This was in 1634 ; by 1637 Pere Lejeune began to 
doubt whether his theory that the lodge was shaken 
by the juggler would hold water, Two Indians — one 
of them a sorcerer, Pigarouich, ' me descouvrant avec 
grande sincerity toutes ses malices' — 'making a 
clean breast of his tricks ' — vowed that they did not 
shake the lodge — that a great wind entered fort 
promptemcnt d rudement, and they added that the 
'tabernacle' (as Lejeune very injudiciously calls the 
Medicine Lodge), 'is sometimes so strong that a 
single man can hardly stir it'. The sorcerer was a 
small weak man. Leieune himself noted the strength 
of the structure, and saw it move with a violence 
which he did not think a man could have communi- 
cated to it, especially not for such a length of time. 
He was assured by many (Indian) witnesses that the 
tabernacle was sometimes laid level with the ground, 
and again that the sorcerer's arm and legs might be 
seen projecting outside, while the lodge staggered 
about — nay, more, the lodge would rock and sway 
after the juggler had left it. As usual, there was a 
savage, Auiskuouaskousit, who had seen a juggler 
rise in air out of the structure, while others, looking 
in, saw that he was absent. St. Theresa had done 
equal marvels, but this does not occur to the good 
Father. 

The savage with the long name was a Christian 
catechumen, and yet he stood to it that he had seen 



48 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

a sorcerer disappear before his very eyes, like the 
second-sighted Highlander in Kirk's Secret Common- 
wealth (1691), ' His neibours often perceaved this 
man to disappear at a certane place, and about one 
hour after to become visible.' It would be more 
satisfactory if the Father had seen these things him- 
self, like Mrs. Newton Crosland, who informs the 
world that, when with Robert Chambers and other 
persons of sanity, she felt a whole house violently 
shaken, trembling, and thrilling in the presence of 
a medium^not a professional, but a young lady 
amateur. Here, of course, we greatly desire the 
evidence of Robert Chambers, Spirits came to 
Swedenborg with a wind, but it was only strong 
enough to flutter papers ; 'the cause of which,' as 
he remarks with naivete, ' I do not yet understand '. 
If Swedenborg had gone into a Medicine Lodge, no 
doubt, in that ' close place,' the phenomena would 
have been very much more remarkable. In 1853 
P^re Arnaud visited the Nasquapees, and describes 
a. scaticc. 'The conjurers shut themselves up in a 
little lodge, and remain for a few minutes in a pen- 
sive attitude, cross-legged. Soon the lodge begins 
to move like a table turning, and replies by bounds 
and jumps to the questions which are put to the 
conjurer.'' The experiment might be tried with a 
modern medium. 

Father Lejeune, in 1637, gives a case which 

reminds us of Home, According to Home, and to 

Mrs. S. C. Hall, and other witnesses, when 'in 

power ' he could not only handle live coals without 

' Hind's Explorations in Labrador, ii. 102. 



SAVAGE SPIRITUALISM. 49 

"§ burned, but he actually placed a large glowing 
coal, about the size of a cricket-ball, on the pate of 
Mr. S. C. Hall, where it shone redly through Mr. 
Hall's white locks, but did him no manner of harm, 
Now Father Pijart was present, Icsmoin ociilaire, when 
a Huron medicine-man heated a stone red hot, put it 
in his mouth, and ran round the cabin with it, with- 
out receiving any harm. Father Brefaeuf, afterwards 
a most heroic martyr, sent the stone to Father 
Lejeune ; it bore the marks of the medicine-man's 
teeth, though Father Pijart, examining the man, 
found that lips and tongue had no trace of burn or 
blister. He reasonably concluded that these things 

id not be done 'sans I'operaiinn dc quelque Demon'. 
That an excited patient should not feel tire is, perhaps, 
admissible, butthatit should not scorch either Mr. Hall, 
or Home, or the Huron, is a large demand on our 
credulity. Still, the evidence in this case (that of Mr. 
Crookes and Lord Crawford) is much better than usual. | 

It would be strange if practices analogous to 
modem 'table-turning' did not exist among savage 
and barbaric races. Thus Mr. Tylor. in Primitive 
Cuiiurc (ii, 156), quotes a Kutuchtu Lama who 
mounted a bench, and rode it, as it were, to a tent 
where the stolen goods were concealed. The bench 
was believed, by the credulous Mongols, to carry 
the Lama! Among the Manyanja of Africa thefts 
are detected by young men holding sticks in their 
Jiands. After a sufficient amount of incantation, 
'dancing, and convulsions, the sticks became pos- 
.sessed, the men ' can hardly hold them,' and 
are dragged after them in the required direc- 



50 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

tions.^ These examples are analogous to the t 
the Divining Rod, which is probably moved uncon- 
sciously by honest 'dowsers'; 'sometimes they 
believe that they can hardly hold it'. These are 
cases of movement of objects in contact with human 
muscles, and are therefore not at all m3'sterioua in 
origin, A regular case of movement without contact 
was reported from Thibet, by M. Tschfirfipanoff, in 
1855. The modern epidemic of table-turning had set 
in, when M. Tscherepanoff wrote thus to the Abeille 
Russc: ^'The Lama can find stolen obiects by follow- 
ing a table which files before him '. But the Lama, 
after being asked to trace an object, requires an in- 
terval of some days, before he sets about finding it. 
When he is ready he sits on the ground, reading a 
Thibetan book, in front of a small square table, on 
which he rests his hands. At the end of half an hour 
he rises and lifts his hands from the surface of the 
table: presently the table also rises from the ground, 
and follows the direction of his hand. The Lama 
elevates his hand above his head, the table reaches 
the level of his eyes : the Lama walks, the table 
rushes before him in the air, so rapidly that he can 
scarcely keep up with its flight. The table then 
spins round, and falls on the earth, the direction 
in which it falls, indicates that in which the stolen 
object is to be sought. M. Tsch6r6panoff says that 
he saw the table fly about forty feet, and fall. The 
stolen object was not immediately discovered, but 

' Rowley, UniversitUs' Mission to Central Africa, p. 217 : cited 
by Mr. Tylor. 

' Quoted in La Table ParlanU, a French seiial, No. i, p. 6. 



SAVAGE SPIRITUALISM. 



51 



a Russian peasant, seeing the line which the table 
took, committed suicide, and the object was found 
in his hut. The date was 1831. M. Tscherepanoff \ 
could not believe his eyes, and searched in vain for . 
an iron wire, or other mechanism, but could find 
nothing of the sort. This anecdote, if it does not 
prove a miracle, illustrates a custom.^ 

As to clairvoyance among savages, the subject is | 
comparatively familiar. Montezuma's priests pre- 
dicted the arrival of the Spaniards long before the 
event. On this point, in itself well vouched for. 
Acosta tells a story which illustrates the identity of 
the 'astral body,' or double, with the ordinary body. 
In the witch stories of Increase Mather and others, 
where the possessed sees the phantasm of the witch, 
and strikes it, the actual witch proves to be injured. 
Story leads to story, and Mr. Thomas Hardy some- 
where tells one to this effect. A farmer's wife, a 
woman of some education, fell asleep in the after- 
noon, and dreamed that a neighbour of hers, a 
woman, was sitting on her chest. She caught at 
the figure's arm in her dream, and woke. Later in 
the day she met her neighbour, who complained of a 
pain in the arm, just where the farmer's wife seized 
it in her dream. The place mortified and the poor 
lady died. To return to Montezuma. An honest 
labourer was brought before him, who made this very 
tough statement. He had been carried by an eagle 
into a cave, where he saw a man in splendid dress 
Bleeping heavily. Beside him stood a burning stick 



tingulv 



. B. Ellis, in his work on the Vorubas (iSg.j), reporti 
iB of a large wooden cylinder. It is used in ordeals. 



52 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 



of incense such as the Aztecs used. A voice an- 
nounced that this sleeper was Montezuma, prophe- 
sied his doom, and bade the labourer burn the 
slumberer's face with the fiaming incense stick. The 
labourer reluctantly applied the flame to the royal 
nose, ' but he moved not, nor showed any feeling; '. 
On this anecdote beins; related to Montezuma, he 
looked on his own face in a mirror, and 'found that 
he was burned, the which he had not felt till then '.' 
On the Coppermine River the medicine-man, 
according to Hearne, prophesies of travellers, like 
the Highland second-sighted man, ere they appear. 
The Finns and Lapps boast of similar powers. 
Scheffer is copious on the clairvoyant feats of Lapps 
in trance. The Eskimo Angakut, when bound with 
their heads between their legSj cause luminous 
apparitions, just as was done by Mr, Stainton Moses, 
and by the mediums known to Porphyry and 
lamblichus ; the Angakut also send their souls on 
voyages, and behold clistant lands. One of the 
oddest Angekok stories in Rink's Talcs and Traditions 
of the Eskimo (p. 324) tells how some children played 
at magic, making ' a dark cabinet,' by hanging 
jackets over the door, to exclude the light. 'The 
slabs of the floor were lifted and rushed after them : ' 
a case of 'movement of objects without physical 
contact'. This phenomenon in future attended the 
young medium's possessions, even when he was 
away from home. This particular kind of manifesta- 
tion, so very common in trials for witchcraft, and in 

■ The Natural and Mornll History of the East and Wcit Indies, 
p. 566, London, 1604. 



SAVAGE SPIRITUALISM. 53 

modem spiritualistic literature, does not appear to , 
prevail much among savages. Persons otherwise J 
credible and sane tell the authorities of the Psychical j 
Society that, with only three amateurs present, things 
are thrown about, and objects are brought from places 
many miles distant, and tossed on the table. These 
are technically termed apports. The writer knows a 
case in which this was attested by a witness of the 
most unimpeachable character. But savages hardly 
go so far. Bishop Callaway has an instance in which 
* spirits ' tossed objects into the midst of a Zulu 
circle, but such instances are not usual. Savages 
also set out food for the dead, but they scarcely 
attain to the credulity, or are granted the experience, 
of a writer in the Medium} This astonishing person 
knew a familiar spirit. At dinner, one day, an empty 
chair began to move, ' and in answer to the question 
whether it would have some dinner, said ** Yes " \ It 
chose croquets de pomme de terre, which were placed on 
the chair in a spoon, lest the spirit, whose manners were 
rustic, should break a plate. * In a few seconds I was 
told that it was eaten, and looking, found the half of it 
gone, with the marks showing the teeth.' Perhaps few 
savages would have told such a tale to a journal which 
ought to have a large circulation — among the Marines. 

The examples of savage spiritualism which have 1 
been adduced might probably receive many additions ; 
those are but gleanings from a large field carelessly 
harvested. The phenomena have been but casually 
studied ; the civilised mind is apt to see, in savage 
seances, nothing but noisy buffoonery. We have 

^ February g, 1872. Quoted by Mr, Tylor, in Primitive Culture^ 
ii. 39, 1873. 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

shown that there is a more serious belief involved, 
and we have adduced cases in which white men were 
not unconscious of the barbarian spell. It also 
appears that the now recognised phenomena of 
hypnotism are the basis of the more serious savage 
magic. The production of hypnotic trances, perhaps 
of hypnotic hallucinations, is a piece of knowledge 
which savages possessed (as they were acquainted 
with quinine), while European physicians and 
philosophers ignored and laughed at it. Tobacco 
and quinine were more acceptable gifts from the 
barbarian. His magic has now and then been ex- 
amined by a competent anthropologist, like Mr. Im 
Thurn, and Castren closely observed the proceedings of 
the bound and bounding Shamans among the Samo- 
yeds. But we need the evidence both of anthropolo- 
gists and of adepts in conjuring. They might detect 
some of the tricks, though Mr. Kellar, a professional 
conjurer and exposer of spiritualistic imposture, has 
been fairly baffled (he says) by Zulus and Hindus, 
while educated Americans are puzzled by the 
Pawnees. Mr. Kellar's plan of displaying a few of 
his own tricks was excellent : the dusky professionals 
were stimulated to show theirsj which, as described, 
were miracles. The Pakeha Maori, already quoted, 
saw a Maori Tolmnga perform ' a very good miracle 
as times go,' but he does not give any particulars. 
The late Mr. Davey, who started as a Spiritualist 
catechumen, managed, by conjuring, to produce 
answers to questions on a locked slate, which is as 
near a miracle as anything. - But Mr. Daveyis dead, 
and he never published his secret, while it is im- 



SAVAGE SPIRITUALISM. 



55 



probable that Mr. Maskelyne will enrich his repertoire 
by travelling among Zulus, Hindus, and Pawnees. 
As savages cease to be savages, our opportunities of 
learning their mystic lore must decrease. 

To one point in this research the notice of 
students in folk-lore may be specially directed. In 
the attempt to account for the diffusion of popular 
tales, such as Cinderella., we are told to observe that 
the countries most closely adjacent to each other 
have the most closely similar variants of the story. 
This is true, as a rule ; but it is also true that, while 
Scandinavian regions have a form of Cinderella with 
certain peculiarities not shared by Southern Europe, 
those crop up sporadically, far away, among Kaffirs 
and the Indian 'aboriginal ' tribe of Santhals. The 
same phenomenon of diffusion occurs when we find 
savage mediums tied up in their trances, all over 
the North, among Canadian Hareskins, among 
Samoyed and Eskimo, while the practice ceases at a 
given point in Labrador, and gives place to Medicine 
Lodges. The binding then reappears in Australia, 
and in the ancient Greek spiritualistic ceremonial. 
The writer is not acquainted with ' the bound and 
bounding young man ' in the intervening regions, 
and it would be very interesting to find connecting 
cases, stepping-stones, as it were, by which the rite 
passed from the Australian continent to the Levant 
and the frozen North. If no such stepping-stones 
can be discovered, say in Africa and Southern Asia, 
the hypothesis that the practice has been invented 
in one place, and thence transmitted, will suffer 
some discredit. 



56 



ANCIENT SPIRITUALISM. 

M, Littre on * demoniac affections^ a subject ^ in his opinion^ 
tvorthy of closer study. Outbreak of Modern Spiritual- 
ism, Its relations to Greek and Egyptian Spiritualism 
recognised. Popular and literary sources of Modern 
Spiritualism, Neoplatonic thaumaturgy not among 
these. Porphyry and lamblichus. The discerning of 
Spirits, The ancient attempts to prove * spirit identity \ 
The test of * spirit lights * in the a?tcient world. Per- 
plexities of Porphyry, Dreams, The Assynt Murder, 
Eusebius on Ancient Spiritualism, The evidence of Texts 
from the Papyri, Evocations, Lights^ levitation, airy 
music^ ancesthesia of Mediums^ ancient and modern. 
Alternative hypotheses : conjuring^ * suggestion * and 
collective hallucination^ actual fact. Strange case of the 
Rev. Stainton Moses, Tabular statement showing 
historical continuity of alleged phenomena. 

In the Revue des Deux Mondes, for 1856, tome i., M. 
Littre published an article on table-turning and 
* rapping spirits '. M. Littr6 was a savant whom 
nobody accused of superstition, and France possessed 
no clearer intellect. Yet his attitude towards the 
popular marvels of the day, an attitude at once 
singular and natural, shows how easily the greatest 
minds can pay themselves with words. A curious 
reader, in that period of excitement about ' spiritual- 
ism,' would turn to the Revue, attracted by M. Littre's 



ANCIENT SPIRITUALISM. 57 

name. He would ask: 'Does M. Littre accept the 
alleged facts; if so, how does he explain them?' 
And he would find that this guide of human thought 
did not, at least, rcjecl the facts; that he did not (as 
he well might have done} offer imposture as the 
general explanation ; that he regarded the topic as 
very obscure, and eminently worthy of study, — and 
that he pooh-poohed the whole affair ! 

This is not very consistent or helpful counsel. 
Like the rest of us, who are so far beneath M. Littrfi in 
grasp and in weight of authority, he was subject to the 
idola f an, the illusions of the market-place. It would 
never do for a great scientific sceptic to say, ' Here 
are strange and important facts of human nature, let 
us examine them as we do all other natural pheno- 
mena,' it would never do for such a man to say that 
without qualification. So he concluded his essay in 
the pooh-pooh tone of voice. He first gives a sketch 
of abnormalities in mortal experience, as in the case 
of mental epidemics, of witchcraft, of the so-called 
prophets in the Cevennes, of the Jansenist marvels. 
He mentions a nunnery where, ' in the sixteenth 
century,' there occurred, among other phenomena, 
movements of inanimate objects, pottery specially 
distinguishing itself, as in the famous ' Stockwell 
mystery'. Unluckily he supplies no references for 
these adventures." The Revue, being written for men 
and women of the world, may discuss such topics, but 
need not offer exact citations. M. Littr^, on the 
strength of his historical sketch, decides, most cor- 
rectly, that there is rien de nouvcau, nothing new, in 
^Rcv}ie dii Deux Mondci, 1856, tome i. p. 853. 



58 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

the spirit-rapping epidemic. ' These maladies never 
desert our race.' But this fact hardly explains why 
' vessels were dragged from the hands ' of his nuns 
in the sixteenth century. 

In search of a cause, he turns to hallucinations. 
In certain or uncertain physical conditions, the mind 
can project and objectify, its own creations. Thus 
Gleditch saw the dead Maupertuis, with perfect 
distinctness, in the salle of the Academy at Berlin. 
Had he not known that Maupertuis was dead, he 
could have sworn to his presence (p. 8b6). Yes: 
but how does that explain volatile pots and pans? 
Well, there are collective hallucinations, as when the 
persecuted in the Cevennes, like the Covenanters, 
heard non-existent psalmody. And all witches told 
much the same tale; apparently because they were 
collectively hallucinated. Then were the spectators 
of the agile crockery collectively hallucinated? M. 
Littre does not say so explicitly, though this is a 
conceivable theory. He alleges after all his scientific 
statements about sensory troubles, that ' the whole 
chapter, a chapter most deser\-ing of study, which 
contains the series of demoniac affections {affections 
demoniaquss), has hardly been sketched out'. 

Among accounts of ' demoniac affections,' descrip- 
tions of objects moved without contact are of frequent 
occurrence. As M. Littre says, it is always the 
same old story. But why is it always the gain e old 
stor y ? There were two theories before the world 
m 1856. First there was the 'animistic hypothesis,' 
' spirits ' move the objects, spirits raise the medium 
in the air, spirits are the performers of the airy 



ANCIENT SPIRITUALISM. 59 

music. Then there was the hypothesis of a force 
or fluid, or faculty, inherent in mankind, and notable 
in some rare examples of humanity. This force, 
fluid, agency, or what you will, counteracts the laws 
of gravitation, and compels tables, or pots, to move 
untouched. 

To the spiritualists M. Littre says, 'Bah !' to the 
partisans of a force or fluid, he says, " Pooh ! ' ' If your 
spirits are spirits, why do they let the world wag on 
in its old way, why do they confine themselves to 
trivial effects ? ' 

The spiritualist would probably answer that he 
did not understand the nature and limits of spiritual 
powers. 

To the friends of a force or faculty in our nature, 
M, LittrS remarks, in effect, ' Why don't you use your 
force ? why don't you supply a new motor for loco- 
motives? Pooh!' The answer would be that it 
was not the volume and market value of the force, 
but the exisleiice of the force, which interested the 
inquirer. When amber, being rubbed, attracted 
straws, the force was as much a force, as worthy 
of scientific study, as when electricity is employed 
to bring bad news more rapidly from the ends of the 
earth. 

These answers are obvious : M. Littre's satire ■ 
was not the weapon of science, but the familiar test 
of the bourgeois and the Phihstine. Still, he admitted, 
nay, asserted strongly, that the whole series of ' de- 
moniac affections ' was ' most worthy of investiga- 
tion,' and was ' hardly sketched out '. In a similar 
manner, Brierre de Boismont, in his work on hallu- 



i 



6o 



COCK lAKB AND COMMON-SENSE. 



cmations, explains a number of ' clairvoyant ' dreams, 
by ordinary causes. But, coming to a vision 
which he knew at first hand, he breaks down : ' We 
must confess that these explanations do not satisfy 
us, and that these events seem rather to belong to 
some of the deepest mysteries of our being '.^ There 
is a point at which the explanations of common- 
sense arouse scepticism. 

Much has been done, since 1856, towards pro- 
ducing a finished picture, in place of an ebauchc. 
The accepted belief in the phenomena of hypnotism, 
and of unconscious mental and bodily actions — ' auto- 
matisms ' — has expelled the old belief in spirits from 
many a dusty nook. But we still ask: 'Do objects 
move untouched ? teihy do they move, or if they move 
not at all (as is most probable) why is it always the 
same story, from the Arctic circle to the tales of 
witches, and of mediums ? ' 

There is tittle said about this particular pheno- 
mena (though something is said), but there is much 
about other marvels, equally widely rumoured of, 
in the brief and dim Greek records of Ihaumaturgy. 
To examine these historically is to put a touch or 
two on the picture of ' demoniac affections,' which 
M. Littr^ desired to see executed. The Greek mys- 
tics, at least, believed that the airy music, the move- 
ments of untouched objects, the triumph over gravi- 
tation, and other natural laws, for which they vouch, 
were caused by 'demons,' were 'demoniac affections'. 
To compare the statements of Eusebiua and lambli- 
chus with those of modern men of science and other 

' Hulliiciiiulioiii, English translation, p. 182, London, 1859. 



modern witnesses, can, therefore, onh' be called 
superfluous and superstitious by those who think 
M. Littre superstitious, and his desired investigation 
'superfluous '. 

When the epidemic of 'spiritualism' broke out 
in the United States (1848-1852) students of class- 
ical literature perceived that spiritualism was no 
new thing, but a recrudescence of practices familiar 
to the ancient world. Even readers who had con- 
fined their attention to the central masterpieces of 
Greek literature recognised some of the revived 
'phenomena'. The ' Trance Medium,' the ' Inspira- 
tional Speaker" was a reproduction of the maiden 
with a spirit of divination, of the Delphic Pythia. In 
the old belief, the god dominated her, and spoke from 
her lips, just as the ' control," or directing spirit, 
dominates the medium. But there were still more 
striking resemblances between ancient and modern 
thaumaturgy, which were only to be recognised by 
readers of the late Neoplatonists, such as Porphyry, 
and of the Christian Fathers, such as Eusebius, who 
argued against the apologists of heathenism. The 
central classical writers, from Homer to Tacitus, are 
not superstitious : they accept the orthodox state 
magic of omens, of augurs, of prodigies, of oracles, 
but anything like private necromancy is alien and 
distasteful to them. We need not doubt that sorcery 
and the consultation of the dead were being prac- 
tised all through the classical period, indeed we know 
that it was so. Plato legislates against sorcery in a 
practical manner; whether it does harm or not, men 
are persuaded that it does harm ; it is vain to argue 



62 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 



with them, therefore the wizard and witch are to 
be punished for their bad intentions.' 

There were regular, and, so to speak, orthodox 
oracles of the dead. They might be consulted by 
such as chose to sleep on tombs, or to visit the cavern 
of Trophonius, or other chasms which were thought 
to communicate with the under world. But the idea 
of bringing a shade, or a hero, a demon, or a god 
into a private room, as in modern spiritualism, meets 
us late in such works as the Letter of Porphyry, and 
the Reply of lamblichus, written in the fourth century 
of our era. If we may judge by the usual fortune 
of folk-lore, these private spiritualistic rites, with- 
out temple, or state-supported priestly order, were 
no new things in the early centuries of Christianity, 
but they had not till then occupied the attention of 
philosophers and men of letters. The dawn of our 
faith was the late twilight of the ancient creeds, the 
classic gods were departing, belief was waning, ghosts 
were walking, even philosophers were seeking for a 
sign. The mysteries of the East had invaded Hellas. 

The Egyptian theory and practice were of special 
importance. By certain sacramental formula, often 
found written on papyrus, the gods could be con- 
strained, and made, like medieval devils, the slaves 
of the magician. Examples will occur later. This 
idea was alien to the Greek mind, at least to the 
philosophic Greek mind. The Egyptians, like 
Michael Scott, had books of dread, and an old 
Egyptian romance turns on the evils which arose, 
as to William of Deloraine, from the possession of 



ANCIENT SPIRITUALISM. 63 

such a volume.' Half-understood strings of Hebrew, 
Syriac, and other ' barbarous ' words and incantations 
occur in Greek spells of the early Christian age. 
Again, old Hellenic magic rose from the lower strata J 
of folk-lore into that of speculation. The people, the ] 
folk, is the unconscious self, as it were, of the edu- 1 
cated and literary classes, who, in a twihght of creeds, ' 
are wont to listen to its promptings, and" return to j 
the old ancestral superstitions long forgotten. 

The epoch of the rise of modern spiritualism 
was analogous to that when the classical and 
oriental spiritualism rose into the sphere of the 
educated consciousness, In both periods the mar\'el- , 
lous 'phenomena' were practically the same, and so 
were the perplexities, the doubts, the explanatory 
hypotheses of philosophical observers, This aspect 
of the modern spiritualistic epidemic did not escape 
attention. Dr. Leonard Marsh, of the University of 
Vermont, pubhshed. in 1854, a treatise called The 
Apocatastasis, or Progress Backwards. He proved 
that the marvels of the Foxes, of Home, and the 
other mediums, were the old marvels of Neoplatonism. 
But he draws no conclusion except that spiritualism 
is retrogressive. His book is wonderfully ill-printed, 
and, though he had some curious reading, his style 
was cumbrous, jocular, and verbose. It may, there- 
, be worth while, in the light of anthropological 
, to show how very closely human nature 
repeated its past performances. 
: new marvels were certainly not stimulated 
by literary knowledge of the ancient thaumaturgy. 
1 Rtcards of the Past, iv. 134-136. 



OMMON-SENSE. 



64 COCK LANE i 

Modern spiritualism is an effort to organise and 
' exploit ' the traditional and popular phenomena of 
rapping spirits, and of ghosts. Belief in these had 
always lived an underground life in rural iegendj quite 
unharmed by enlightenment and education. So far, 
it resembled the ordinary creeds of folk-lore. It 
is probable that, in addition to oral legend, there was 
another and more literary source of modern thauma- 
turgy. Books like Glanvil's, Baxter's, those of the 
Mathers and of Sinclair, were thumbed by the people 
after the literary class had forgotten them. More- 
over, the Foxes, who started spiritualism, were 
Methodists, and may well have been familiar with 
'old Jeffrey,' who haunted the Wesleys' house, and 
with some of the stories of apparitions in Wesley's 
Arminian Magasitie. 

If there were literary as well as legendary sources 
of nascent spiritualism, the sources were these. 
Porphyry. lambhchus, Eusebius, and the life of Apol- 
lonius of Tyana, cannot have influenced the illiterate 
parents of the new thaumaturgy. This fact makes 
the repetition, in modem spiritualism, of Neoplatonic 
theories and Neoplatonic marvels all the more inter- 
esting and curious. 

The shortest cut to knowledge of ancient spirit- 
ualism is through the letter of Porphyry to Anebo, 
and the reply attributed to lamblichus. Porphyry, 
the disciple of Plotinus, was a seeker for truth in 
divine things. Prejudice, literary sentiment, and 
other considerations, prevented him from acquiescing 
in the Christian verity. The ordinary paganism 
shocked him, both by its obscene and undignified 



AMCIENT SPIRITUALISM, 

myths, and by many features of its ritual. He 
devised non-natural interpretations of its sacred le- 
gends, he looked for a visible or tanjpble 'sign,' and 
he did not shrink from investigating the thaumaturgy 
of his age. His letter of inquiry is preserved in 
fragments by Eusebius, and St. Augustine: Gale 
edited it, and, as he says, offers us an Absyrtus (the 
brother of Medea, who scattered his mutilated re- 
mains) rather than a Porphyry.^ Not all of Por- 
phyry's questions interest us for our present purpose. 
He asks, among other things : How can gods, as 
in the evocations of gods, be made subject to neces- 
sity, and compelled io manifest themselves ? ^ 

How do you discriminate between demons, and 
gods, that are manifest, or not manifest ? How does 
a demon differ from a hero, or from a mere soul of a 
dead man ? 

By what sign can we be sure that the manifesting 
agency present is that of a god, an angel, an archon, 
or a soul ? For to boast, and to display phantasms, 
is common to all these varieties.^ 

In these perplexities. Porphyry resembles the 

anxious spiritualistic inquirer. A ' materialised 

spirit ' alleges himself to be Washington, or Franklin, 

or the lost wife, or friend, or child of him who seeks 

the mediums. How is the inquirer, how was Porphyry 

to know that the assertion is correct, that it is not 

the mere 'boasting 'of some vulgar spirit ? In the 

same way, when messages are given through a 

' The references are to Parlhey's edition, Berlin, 1857. 

' col Kiyi/urai d>'if7iiai Bi&i', 4, 3. 

' All are, for Porphyry, ' phanlasmogenetic agencies '. 



66 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 



§>■ 



y. -1. 'identifying them, of not taking an angel \ 
■ Ji,*' or vice versa, was most important in the Mi 



medium's mouth, or by raps, or movements of a 
table, or a planchette, or by automatic writing, how 
(even discounting imposture) is the source to be 
verified ? How is th e, ide ntity of jhe^ ^Jrit to be 
established? This question of discerning bpirits. of 
I for a devil, 
t important in the Middle Ages. 
On this turned the fate of Joan of Arc : Were her 
voices and visions of God or of Satan ? They came, 
as in the cases mentioned by lamblichus, with a 
light, a hallucination of brilliance. When Jean 
Br^hal, Grand Inquisitor of France, in 1450-1456, 
held the process for rehabilitating Joan, condemned 
as a witch in 1431, he entered learnedly into the tests 
of 'spirit-identity '.^ St. Theresa was bidden to try to 
exorcise her visions, by the sign of the Cross. Saint 
or sorcerer? it was always a delicate inquiry. 

lamblichus, in his reply to Porphyry's doubts, 
first enters into theology pretty deeply, but, in 
book ii, chap, iii. he comes, as it were, to business. 
The nature of the spiritual agency present on any 
occasion may be ascertained from his manifestations 
or epiphanies. All these agencies show in a light, 
we are reminded inevitably of the light which ac- 
companied the visions of Colonel Gardiner and of 
Pascal. Joan of Arc, too, in reply to her judges, 
averred that a light (claritas) usually accompanied 
the voices which came to her." These things, if we 
call them hallucinations, were, at least, hallucinations 
of the good and great, and must be regarded not 



ANCIENT SPIRITUALISM. 67 

without reverence. But modern spiritualistic and 
ghostly literature is full of lights which accompany 
' manifestations/ or attend the nocturnal invasions 
of apparitions. Examples are so common that they 
can readily be found by any one who studies Mrs. 
Crowe's Night Side of Nature, or Home's Life, or 
Phantasms of the Living, or the Proceedings of the 
Psychical Society. Meantime Homer, and Theocritus 
in familiar passages, attest this belief in light attend- 
ant on the coming of the divine, while the Norse 
Sagas, and the well-known tale of Sir Charles Lee's 
daughter and the ghost of her mother (1662), speak 
for the same belief in the pre-Christian north, and 
in the society of the Restoration.^ A light always 
comes among the Eskimo, when the tornak, or 
familiar spirit, visits the Angekok or sorcerer. Here, 
then, is harmony enough in the psychical beliefs of 
all time, as when we learn that lights were flashed by 
the spirits who beset the late Rev. Stainton Moses.^ 
Unluckily, while we have this cloud of witnesses to 
the belief in a spiritual light, we are still uncertain 
as to whether the seeing of such a light is a physical 
symptom of hallucination. This is the opinion of 
M. L^lut, as given in his Amulette de Pascal Tp. 301): 
* This globe of fire ... is a common constituent of 
hallucinations of sight, and may be regarded at once 
as their most elementary form, and their highest 
degree of intensity'. M. L6lut knew the pheno- 
menon among mystics whom he had observed in 

^ Appended to Beaumont's work on Spirits, 1705. 

*See Mr. Lillie's Modern Mystics, and, better, Mr. Myers, in 
Proceedings S. P. R., Jan., 1894. 



68 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

his practice as an 'alienist'. He also quotes a 
story told of himself by Benvenuto Celiini, If we 
can admit that this hallucination of brilliant light 
may be produced in the conditions of a seance, whether 
modem, savage, or classical, we obtain a partial 
solution of the problem presented by the world-wide 
diffusion of this belief. Of course, once accepted 
as an element in spiritualism, a little phosphorus 
supplies the modern medium with a requisite of his 
trade.^ 

Returning to lamblichus, he classifies his phan- 
tasmogenetic agencies by the kind of light they 
show ; greater or less, more or less divided, more or 
less pure, steady or agitated (li. 4). The arrival of 
demons is attended by disturbances.^ Heroes are 
usually veiy noisy in their manifestations: a hero is a 
polter-geist, 'sounds echo around' (ii. 8). There are 
also subjective moods diversely generated by diverse 
apparitions; souls of the dead, for example, prompt 
to lust (ii. g). On the whole, a great deal of experi- 

' Origen, or whoever wrote the Philosophoumena, gives a. recipe 
for producing a luminouE figure on a wall. For moving lights, he 
suggests attaching lighted low to a bird, and letting it loose. Maury 
translates the passages in La Magle, pp. 58-59. Spiritualists, of 
course, will allege that the wotld-wide theory of spectral lights is 
baaed on fact, and that the hallucinations are not begotten by subjec- 
tive conditions, but by a genuine ' phantasmo genetic agency '■ Two 
men of science, Baron Schrenk-Notzing. and Dr. Gibotteau, vouch 
for illusions of light accompanying attempts by I'wing agents to 
transfer a hallucinatory vision of themselves to persons at a distance 
{yournal S. P. R., iii. 307 ; Proceedings, viii. .567). It will be asserted 
by spiritualists that disembodied agencies produce the same effect 
in t higher degree. 



ANCIENT SPIRITUALISM. 69 

ence is needed" by the thaumaturgist, if he is to 
distinguish between one kind of manifestation 
and another. Even Inquisitors have differed in 
opinion. 

lambhchus next tackles the difficult question of 
imposition and personation by spirits. Thus a soul, 
or a spirit, may give itself out for a god, and exhibit 
the appropriate phantasmagoria r may boast and 
deceive (ii. 10). This is the result of some error or 
blunder in the ceremony of evocation.' A bad or low 
spirit may thus enter, disguised as a demon or god, 
and may utter deceitful words. But ail arts, says our 
guide, are liable to errors, and the ' sacred art ' must 
not be judged by its occasional imperfections. We 
know the same kind of excuses in modem times. 

Porphyry went on to ask questions about divina- 
tion and clairvoyance. We often ascertain the future, 
he says, in dreams, when our bodies are lying still and 
peaceful: when we are in no convulsive ecstasy such 
as diviners use. Many persons prophesy ' in enthusi- 
astic and divinely seized moments, awake, in a sense, 
yet not in their habitual state of consciousness'. 
Music of certain kinds, the water of certain holy 
wells, the vapours of Branchida;, produce such 
ecstatic effects. Some 'take darkness for an ally' 
(dark seances), some see visions in water, others on 
L wall, others in sun or moon. As an example of 
ancient visions in water, we may take one from the 
life of Isidorus, by Damascius. Isidorus, and his 
biographer, were acquainted with women who beheld 
in pure water in a glass vessel the phantasms of 



70 



COCK LANE AND COllMON- SENSE. 



future events' This form of divination is still prac- 
tised, though crystal balls are more commonly used 
than decanters of water. Ancient and modern super- 
stition, as in the familiar case of Dr. Dee, attributes 
the phantasms to spiritual agency. 

Is a divine being; coiiipdled, Porphyry asks, to aid 
in these efforts, or is it only the soul of the seer, as 
some believe, which hallucinates itself, by the aid 
of points de repire ? * Or is there a blending of the 
soul's operations with the divine inspiration ? Or 
are demons in some way evolved out of something 
abstracted from living bodies ? He seems to hint at 
some such theoiy of ' exuvious fumes ' from the 
' circle,' as more recent inquirers have imagined. 
The young appear to be peculiarly sensitive to 
vapours, invocations, and other magical methods, 
which affect the human constitution, and the young 
are usually engaged as seers. Hence visions are 
probably subjective. Ecstasy, madness, fasts and 
vigils seem particularly favourable to divination. 
Or are there certain mystic correspondences in the 
nature of things, which may be detected ? Thus 
stones and herbs are used in evocations; 'sacred 
bonds' are tied (as in the Eskimo hypnotism and 
in Australia) ; closed doors are opened, the heavenly 
bodies are observed. Some suppose that there is a 
race of false and counterfeiting spirits, which, 
indeed, lamWichus admits. These act the parts of 
gods, demons, and souls of the dead. Again, the 
conjurer plays on our expectant attention. Omit- 
ting some remarks no longer appropriate, Porphyry 

' Damascius, ap. Phottum. ' Tria-ti ix fUKpair aXSuytiATum iyitpifunL. 



ANCIENT SPIRITUALISM. 

asks what use there is in chantinj; barbarous and 
meaningless words. He is inclined to think that 
the demon, or guardian spirit of each man is only 
part of his soul, — in fact his 'subliminal self. And 
generally, he suspect? that the whole affair is ' a mere 
imaginative deceit, played off on itself by the soul '. 
Replying as to divination, lamblichus says that 
the right kind of dreams are between sleeping and 
waking when we hear a voice giving directions. A 
modem example occurred in the trial of the Assynt 
murderer in 1831. One Kenneth Fraser, called 'the 
dreamer,' said in the trial : ' I was at home when 
I had the dream. It was said to me in my sleep by 
a voice like a man's voice, that the pack (of the 
murdered pedlar) was lying in sight of the place. I 
got a sight of the place just as if I had been awake, 
I never saw the place before, but the voice said in 
Gaelic, " the pack of the merchant is lying in a cairn 
of stones, in a hollow near to their house". The 
voice did not name Macleod's house.' The pack 
was, however, not found there, but in a place hard 
by, which Kenneth had no! seen in his dream. Oddly 
enough, the murderer had originally hidden the pack, 
or some of its contents, in a cairn of stones, but 
later removed it. In the ' willing game,' as played 
by Mr, Stuart Cumberland, the seeker usually goes 
first to the place where the hider had thought of con- 
cealing the object, though later he changed his mind. 
Macleod was hanged, he confessed his guilt.' 

I Li/i of Hugh Macleod (Noble, InverncBs). As an example of 
tile growth of myth, aee the version of these facts in Praser's 
Magaxine for 1856. Even in a sermon preached immediately after 



72 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 



lamblichus believed in dreams of this kind, and 
in voices heard by men wide awake, as in the case of 
Joan of Arc. When an invisible spirit is present, he 
makes a whirring noise, hke the Cock Lane Ghost ! * 
Lights also are exhibited; the medium then by 
some mystic sense knows what the spirit means. The 
soul has two lives, one animal, one intellectual ; in 
sleep the latter is more free, and more clairvoyant. 
In trance, or somnambulism, many cannot feel pain 
even if they are burned, the god within does not 
let fire harm them (iii. 4). This, of course, suggests 
Home's experiments in handling live coals, as Mr. 
Crookes and Lord Crawford describe them. Compare 
the Berserk 'coal-biters' in the saga of Egil, and 
the Huron coal-biter in the preceding essay. ' They 
do not then live an animal life.' Sword points do 
not hurt them. Their actions are no longer human. 
' Inaccessible places are accessible to them, when 
thus borne by the gods ; and they tread on fire un- 
harmed; they walk across rivers. . . . They are not 
themselves, they live a diviner life, with which they 
are inspired, and by which they are possessed.' 
Some are convulsed in one way, some in another, 
some are still. Harmonies are heard (as in Home's 
case and that of Mr. Stainton Moses). Their bodies 
are elongated (like Home's), or broadened, or lloat in 
mid-air, as in a hundred tales of mediums and saints. 
Sometimes the medium sees a light when the spirit 
takes possession of him, sometimes all present see it 



the event, it 


vassa 


d that th 


of his dream 






Mii. 2. 1, 


iC^i^i 


o..Vr.?* 



„/.,„.JU 






ANCIENT SPIRITUALlSKf. 73 

(iii. 6). Thus Wodrow says (as we have already 
shown), that Mrs. Carlyle's ancestor, Mi", Welsh, 
shone in a light as he meditated ; and Patrick 
Walker tells the same tale about two of the fanatics 
called ' Sweet Singers '. 

From all this it follows, lamblichus holds, that 
spiritual possession is a genuine objective fact and 
that the mediums act under real spiritual control. 
Omitting local oracles, and practices apparently 
analogous to the use of planchette, lamblichus regards 
the heavenly lii;ht as the great source of and evidence 
for the external and spiritual character and cause of 
divination (iii. 14). lamblichus entirely rejects all 
Porphyi-y's psychological theories of hallucinations, 
of the demon or 'genius' as 'subliminal self,' and 
asserts the actual, objective, sensible action of spirits, ■ 
divine or daemonic. What effect lamblichus pro- 
duced on the inquiring Porphyiy is uncertain. In 
his De Abstinentia (ii. 39) he gives in to the notion of 
deceitful spirits. 

In addition to the evidence of Porphyiy, lam- 
blichus, Eusebius and other authors of the fourth cen- 
tury, some recently published papyri of the same period 
throw a little light on the late Greek thaumaturgy.^ 
Thus Papyrus cxxv. verso (about the fifth century) 
' contains elaborate instructions for a magical process, 
the effect of which is to evoke a goddess, to trans- 
form her into the appearance of an old woman, and 
to bind to her the service of the person using the 
spell. . . .' 

' Greek Papyri in the British Museum ; edited by H. G, Kenyon, 
H.A., London, lSg3. 



4 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

Obviously we would much prefer a spell for turning 
an old woman into a goddess. The document is 
headed, 'ypauq A-rroWov Tvaiea^ uTTJjpen?, 'the old 
serving woman of Apollonius of Tyana,' and it ends, 
17 -npa^Ki SeBoKifiucnai, 'it is proved by practice '. 

You take the head of an ibis, and write certain 
characters on it in the blood of a black ram, and go 
to a cross-road, or the sea-shore, or a river-bank at 
midnight : there you recite gibberish and then see 
a pretty lady riding a donkey, and she will put off 
her beauty like a mask and assume the appearance of 
old age, and will promise to obey you : and so forth. 

Here is a ' constraint put on a god ' as Porphyry 
complains, Reginald Scot, in his Discovery of Wiich- 
crafi (1584), has a very similar spell for alluring an 
airy sylph, and making her serve and be the mistress of 
the wizard ! There is another papyrus (xlvi.J, of the 
fourth century, with directions for divination by aid 
of a boy looking into a bowl, says the editor (p. 64). 
There is a long invocation full of ' barbarous words,' 
like the meditcval nonsense rhymes used in magic. 
There is a dubious reading, 0a8pov or ^oBpov ; it is 
suggested that the boy is put into a pit, as it seems was 
occasionally done.^ It is clear that a spirit is sup- 
posed to show the boy his visions. A spell follows 
for summoning a visible deity. Then we have a 
recipe for making a ring which will enable the owner 
to know the thoughts of men. The god is threat- 
ened if he does not serve the magicians. All manner 
of fumigations, plants, and stones are used in these 

' See notict in Classical Review, February, 1^94, 



ANCIENT SPIRITUALISM. 75 

idiotic cerem onies, and to these Porphyry refers. The 
"papyri do not illustrate the phenomena described by 
lamblichus, such as the * light,' levitation, music of 
unknown origin, the resistance of the medium to 
fire and sword points, and all the rest of his list of 
prodigies. lamblichus probably looked down on the 
believers in these spells written on papyri with ex- 
treme disdain. They are only interesting as folk-lore, 
like the rhymes of incantation preserved in Reginald 
Scot's Discovery of Witchcraft, 

There were other analogies between modern, 
ancient, and savage spiritualism. The medium was 
swathed, or tied up, like the Davenport Brothers, 
like Eskimo and Australian conjurers, like the High- 
land seer in the bull's hide.^ The medium was 
understood to be a mere instrument like a flute, 
through which the * control,' the god or spirit, spoke.'^ 
This is still the spiritualistic explanation of auto- 
matic speech. Eusebius goes so far as to believe that 
* earthbound spirits ' do speak through the medium, 
but a much simpler theory is obvious.^ Indeed 
where automatic performances of any sort — by writ- 
ing, by the kind of * Ouija ' or table pointing to letters, 

' See oracles in Eusebius, Pracp. Evang.y v. g. The medium was 
tied up in some way, he had to be unloosed and raised from the ground. 
The inspiring agency, in a hurry to be gone, gave directions for the 
unbinding, ica^eo 8^ 'Kp6^p(ov odpcovy avdirave Se (l>(ara jxifxvtav iKKixav 
ico\i\v r{nroVy -^S' fiwrt> yuitav NctA^Tjv oB6vriv x^P^^^ arifiapa7s iivaelpas. 
The binding of the Highland seer in a bull's hide is described by Scott 
in the Lay of the Last Minstrel. A modern Highland seer has en- 
sconced himself in a boiler! The purpose is to concentrate the 
* force \ 

^Praep, Evang,, v. 8. "^ Ibid,y v. 15, 3. 



76 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

as described by Ammianus Marcellinus (xxix. 29) — or 
by speaking, are concerned, we have the aid of 
psychology, and the theory of ' unconsciouscerebration ' 
to help us. But when we are told the old tales of 
whirring noises, of ' bilocation,' of ' levitation,' of a 
mystic light, we are in contact with more difficult 
questions. 

In brief, the problem of spiritualism in general 
presents itself to us thus: in ancient, modern, and 
savage thaumaturgy there are certain automatic 
phenomena. The conjurer, priest, or medium acts, 
or pretends to act, in various ways beyond his normal 
consciousness. Savages, ancient mystics, and spiritu- 
alists ascribe his automatic behaviour to the con- 
trol of spirits, gods or demons. No such hypothesis 
is needed. 

On the other side, however, are phenomena not 
automatic, ' spiritual ' lights, and sounds ; interfer- 
ences with natural laws, as when bodies are lifted in 
the air, or are elongated, when fire does not fasten 
on them, and so on. These phenomena, in ancient 
times, followed on the performance of certain mystic 
rites. They are now said to occur without the aid 
of any such rites. Gods and spirits are said to cause 
them, but they are only attained in the presence 
of certain e.xceptional persons, mediums, saints, 
priests, conjurers. Clearly then, not the rites, but 
the peculiar constitution of these individuals is the 
cause (setting imposture aside) of the phenomena, 
of the hallucinations, of the impressions, or whatever 
they are to be styled. That ia to say, witnesses, in 
other matters credible, aver that they receive these 



ANCIENT SPIRITUALISM. 77 

ISiliar impressions in the society of certain persons 
and not in that of people in general. Now these 
impressions are, everywhere, in everj' age and stage 
of civilisation, essentially identical. Is it stretching 
probability almost beyond what it will hear, to allege 
that all the phenomena, in the Arctic circle as in 
Australia, in ancient Alexandria as in modem London, 
are, always, the result of an imposture modelled on 
savage ideas of the supernatural ? 

If so we are reduced to the choice between 
actual objective facts of unknown origin (frequently 
counterfeited of course), and the theory, — which 
really comes to much the same thing, — of identical 
and collective hallucinations in given conditions. On 
either hypothesis the topic is certainly not without 
interest for the student of human nature. Even if 
we could, at most, establish the fact that people like 
lamblichus, Mr. Crookes, Lord Crawford, Jesuits in 
Canada, professional conjurers in Zululand, Spaniards 
in early Peru, Australian blacks, Maoris, Eskimo, 
cardinals, ambassadors, are similarly hallucinated, as 
they declare, in the presence of priests, diviners, 
Home,2ulu magicians, Biraarks,Jossakeeds, angaktit, 
takttngas, and saints, and Mr. Stainton Moses, still 
the identity of the false impressions is a topic for i 
psychological study. Or, if we disbelieve this cloud 
of witnesses, if they voluntarily fabled, we ask, why 
do they all fable in exactly the same fashion ? Even 
setting aside the animistic hypothesis, the subject 
is full of curious neglected problems. 

Once more, if we admit the theory of intentional 
imposture by saints, angakui, Zulu medicine-men. 



78 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

mediums, and the rest, we must grant that a trick 
which takes in a professional conjurer, like Mr. Kellar, 
is a trick well worthy of examination. How did his 
Zulu learn the method of Home, of the Egyptian 
diviners, of St. Joseph of Cupertino ? ^ Each solution 
has its difficulties, while practical investigation is 
rarely possible. We have no Home with us, at 
present, and the opportunity of studying his effects 
carefully was neglected. It was equally desirable to 
study them whether he caused collective hallucina- 
tions, or whether his effects were merely those of 
ordinary, though skilful, conjuring. For Home, 
whatever his moral character may have been, was a 
remarkable survival of a class of men familiar to the 
mystic lamblichus, to the savage races of the past and 
present, and (as fat" as his marvels went) to the bio- 
graphers of the saints. ' I am one of those,' says the 
Zulu medicine-man, in Mr. Rider Haggard's Allan's 
Wife, ' who can make men see what they do not see.' 
The class of persons who are said to have possessed 
this power appear, now and then, in all human 
history, and have at least bequeathed to us a puzzle 
in anthropology. This problem has recently been 
presented, in what may be called an acute form, by the 
publication of the ' Experiences of Mr. Stainton Moses '.^ 
Mr. Moses was a clergyman and schoolmaster; in 
both capacities he appears to have been industrious, 

■Dt. Hodgson, in Proceedings S. P. R., Jan., 1894, makes Mr. 
Kellar'3 evidence as to Indian ' levitation ' seem iar from convincing I 
Aa a professional conjurer, and enposer of spiritualistic imposture, 
M[. Kellar has made statements about his own experiences which are 
not easily to be harmonised. 

" Proceidings S. P. R. Jan., 1894. 



ANCIENT SPIRITUALISM. 



79 



conscientious, and honourable. He was not devoid of 
literature, and had contributed, it is said, to periodicals 
as remote from mysticism a^Pumli. and the Saturday 
Review. He was a sportsman, at least he was a 
disciple of our father, Izaak Walton. ' Most anglers 
are quiet men, and followers of peace, so simply wise 
as not to sell their consciences to buy riches, and 
with them vexation, and a fear to die," says Izaak. 

In early middle age, about 1874, Mr. Moses began 
to read such books as Dale Owen's, and to sit ' atten- 
tive of his trembling ' table, by way of experiment. He 
soon found that tables bounded in his presence, un- 
touched. Then he developed into a regular ' naedium ', 
Inanimate objects came to him through stone walls. 
Scent of all sorts, and, as in the case of St. Joseph 
of Cupertino, of an unknown sort, was scattered on 
people in his company. He floated in the air. He 
wrote 'automatically'. Knocks resounded in his 
neighbourhood, in the open air. 'Lights' of all 
varieties hovered in his vicinity. He spoke ' auto- 
matically,' being the mouth-piece of a 'spirit,' and 
very dull were the spirit's sermons. After a struggle 
he believed in 'spirits,' who twanged musical notes 
out in his presence. He became editor of a journal 
named Light; he joined the Psychical Society, but 
left it when the society pushed materialism so far as 
to demonstrate that certain professional mediums 
were convicted swindlers. 

The evidence for his marvels is the testimony of 
a family, perfectly respectable, named Speer, and of a 
few other witnesses whom nobody can suspect of con- 
scious inaccuracy. There remain, as documents, his 



8o COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

books, his MS. notes, and other corroborative noteskept 
by his friend Dr. Speer, a sceptic, and other observers. 

It IS admitted that Mr. Moses was not a cautious 
logician, his inferences are problematic, his gener- 
alisations hasty. As to the facts, it is equally 
difficult to believe in them, and to believe that Mr. 
Moses was a conscious impostor, and his friends easy 
dupes. He cannot have been an impostor uncon- 
sciously in a hypnotic state, in a ' trance,' because 
his effects could not have been improvised. If they 
were done by j ugglerj', they required elaborate 
preparations of all sorts, which must have been 
made in full ordinary consciousness. If we fall 
back on collective hallucination, then that hallucina- 
tion is something of world-wide diffusion, ancient and 
continuous, for the effects are those attributed by 
lamblichus to his mystics, by the Church to her 
saints, by witnesses to the 'possessed,' by savages to 
medicine-men, and by Mr. Crookes and Lord Craw- 
ford to D. D. Home. Of course we may be told that 
all lookers-on, from Eskimo to Neoplatonists and 
men of science, know what to expect, and are hallu- 
cinated by their own e.vpectant attention. But, 
when they expect nothing, and are disappointed by 
having to witness prodigies, the same old prodigies, 
what is the explanation ? 

The following tabular statement, altered from 
that given by Mr. Myers in his publication of Mr. 
Moses and Dr. Speer's MS. notes, will show the 
historical identity of the phenomena. Mr. Moses 
was the agent in all ; those exhibited by other 
ancient and modern agents are marked with a cross. 



ANCIENT SPIRITUALISM. 





3g 

if 


» , 


.,„.,„„.,..,... 


K . , , 


'Movemenl ol abJECls 


. «..«.. 


'Levitalion'lfloilmgid 


Stl't - 


Disappearance and Ke- 


' 


Passau of Mstter 
.hrpush Mailer. 




SSf'""- 




Sounds madeon iQ5iru- 
meiits supernormallj. 


. 


Dire^Uauitds. Thatis, 
agency. 


. > . 


s...... 


. , « . 


LiEh.>. 




ObjeclB'matsriali^ed'. 


. 


.oSched"Dr"=°n^^ ' 



There are here twelve miracles! Home and 
lamblichus add to Mr. Moses's repertoire the altera- 
tion of the medium's height or bulk. This feat still 
leaves Mr. Moses ' one up,' as regards Home, in 
whose presence objects did not disappear, nor did 
they pass through stone walls. The questions are, 
to account for the continuity of collective hallucina- 
tions, if we accept that hypothesis, and to explain 
the procedure of Mr. Moses, if he were an im- 
postor. He did not exhibit before more than seven 
or eight private friends, and he gained neither 
money nor dazzling social success by his perform- 



This page in the chapter of ' demoniac affections ' 
is thus still in the state of ebauche. Mr. Moses 
believed his experiences to be 'demoniac affections,' 
in the Neoplatonic sense. Could his phenomena 
have been investigated by the Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, Dr. Parker, Messrs. Maskelyne and Cook, 
and Professor Huxley, the public mind might 
have arrived at some conclusion on the subject. 
But Mr. Moses's chief spirit, known in society 
as ' Imperator,' declined to let strangers look 
on. He testified his indignation in a manner 
so bruyant, be so banged on tables, that Mr. Moses 
and his friends thought it wiser to avoid an alter- 
cation. 

This exclusiveness of ' Imperator' certainly t^onwe 
fitrieusement a penser. If spirits are spirits they may 
just as well take it for understood that performances 
'done in a comer' are of no scientific value. But 
we are still at a loss for a ' round ' and satisfactory 



ANCIENT SPIRITUALISM. 83 

hypothesis which will colligate all the alleged facts, j 

and explain their historical continuity. We merely j 

state that continuity as a historical fact. Marvels of | 

savages, Neoplatonists, saints of Church or Covenant, \ 

'spontaneous' phenomena, Mediumistic phenomena, \ 

all hang together in some ways. Of this the Church ( 

has her own explanation. ' 




COMPARATIVE PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. 



A Party at Ragky Castle. The Miraculous Conformist. 
The Restoration and Scepticism. Experimental Proofs 
of Spiritual Existence. Glanvill. Boyle. More. The 
Gentleman's Butler. ' Levilalion.' Witchcraft. Move- 
ments of Objects. The Drummer of Tedworth. Haunted 
Houses. Rerriek. Glenliice. Ghosts. ' Spectral Evi- 
dence.' Continuity and Uniformity of Stories. St. 
Joseph of Cupertino, his Flights. Modern Instances. 
Theory of Induced Hallucination. Ibn Batuta. Ani- 
mated Furniture. From China toPeru. Rapping ^irit 
at Lyons. The Imposture at Orleans. The Stockwell 
Mystery. The Demon of Spraiton. Modern Instances. 
The IVesleys. Theory' of Imposture. Conclusion. 

In the month of February, 1665, there was assembled 
at Ragley Castle as curious a party as ever met in 
an English country-house. The hostess was the 
Lady Conway, a woman of remarkable talent and 
character, but wholly devoted to mystical specula- 
tions. In the end, unrestrained by the arguments 
of her clerical allies, she joined the Society of Friends, 
by the world called Quakers. Lady Conway at the 
time when her guests gathered at Ragley, as through 
all her later life, was suffering from violent chronic 
headache. The party at Ragley was invited to meet 
her latest medical attendant, an unlicensed practi- 
tioner, Mr. Valentine Greatrakes, or Greatorex; his 






COMPARATIVE PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. 

name is spelled in a variety of ways. Mr, Great- 
rakes was called ' The Irish Stroker ' and ' The 
Miraculous Conformist ' by his admirers, for, while 
it was admitted that Dissenters might frequently 
possess, or might claim, powers of miracle, the gift, 
or the pretension, was rare among members of the 
Established Church. The person of Mr. Greatrakes, 
if we may believe Dr, Henry Stubbe, physician at 
Stratford- on- Avon, diffused a pleasing fragi^ance as 
of violets. Lord Herbert of Cherbury, it will be 
remembered, tells the same story about himself in 
his memoirs. Mr. Greatrakes 'is a man of grace- 
ful personage and presence, and if my phantasy 
betrayed not my judgement,' says Dr. Stubbe, 'I 
observed in his eyes and meene a vivacitie and sprite- 
linesse that is nothing common'. 

This Miraculous Conformist was the younger son 
of an Irish squire, and a person of some property. 
After the Restoration — and not before — Greatrakes 
felt 'a strong and powerful impulse in him to 
essay' the art of healing by touching, or stroking. 
He resisted the impulse, till one of his hands 
having become ' dead ' or numb, he healed it by the 
strokes of the other hand. From that moment 
Greatrakes practised, and became celebrated ; he 
cured some diseased persons, failed wholly with 
others, and had partial and temporary success with 
a third class. The descriptions given by Stubbe, 
in his letter to the celebrated Robert Boyle, and 
by Foxcroft, Fellow of King's College. Cambridge, 
leave little doubt that 'The Irish Stroker' was most 
successful with hypochondriacal and hysterical 



86 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 



patients. He used to chase the disease up and 
down their bodies, if it did not 'fly out through the 
inteistices of his lingers,' and if he could drive it 
into an outlying part, and then forth into the wide 
world, the patient recovered. So Dr, Stubbe reports 
the method of Greatrakes.' He was brought over. 
from Ireland, at a charge of about ^155, to cure 
Lady Conway's headaches. In this it is confessed 
that he entirely failed ; though he wrought a few 
miracles of healing among rural invalids. To meet 
this fragrant and miraculous Conformist, Lady Con- 
way invited men worthy of the privilege, such as the 
Rev. Joseph Glanvill, F.R.S., the author of Saddu- 
cismus Triumphaius, his friend Dr. Henry More, 
the Cambridge Platonist, and other persons inter- 
ested in mystical studies. Thus at Ragley there 
was convened the nucleus of an unofficial but active 
Society for Psychical Research, as that study ex- 
isted in the seventeenth century. 

The object of this chapter is to compare the 
motives, methods, and results of Lady Conway's 
circle, with those of the modern Society for Psychical 
Research. Both have investigated the reports of 
abnormal phenomena. Both have collected and 
published narratives of eye-witnesses. The moderns, 
however, are much more strict on points ol evidence 
than their predecessors. They are not content to 
watch, but they introduce 'tests,' generally with 
the most disenchanting results. The old researchers 
were animated by the desire to establish the tottering 

' The Miraculous Conformist. A letter la the Honourable 
Robert Boyle. Esq. Oxford : University Press, 1666. 



COMPARATIVE PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. S7 

faith of the Restoration, which was endangered by 
the reaction against Puritanism. Among the fruits 
of Puritanism, and of that frenzied state of mind 
which accompanied the Civii War, was a furious 
persecution of 'witches'. In a rare httle book, 
Select Ca^es of Conscience, touching Witches and Witck- 
craft, by John Gaule, ' preacher of the Word at Great 
Staughton in the county of Huntington' (London, 
1646), we find the author not denying the existence 
of witchcraft, but pleading for calm, learned and 
judicial investigation. To do this was to take his 
life in his hand, for Matthew Hopkins, a fanatical 
miscreant, was ruling in a Reign of Terror through 
thecountry, TheclergyoftheChurchof England, as 
Hutchinson proves in his Treatise of Witchcraft (second 
edition, London, 1720). had been comparatively 
cautious in their treatment of the subject. Their 
record is far from clean, but they had exposed some 
impostures, chiefly, it is fair to say, where Noncon- 
formists, or Catholics, had detected the witch. With 
the Restoration the genera! laxity went so far as to 
scoff at witchcraft, to deny its existence, and even, 
in the works of Wagstaff and Webster, to minimise 
the leading case of the Witch of Endor. Against 
the ' drollery of Sadducism,' the Psychical Re- 
searchers within the English Church, like Glanvill 
and Henry More, or beyond its pale, like Richard 
Baxter and many Scotch divines, defended witchcraft 
and apparitions as outworks of faith in general. The 
modem Psychical Society, whatever the predisposi- 
tion of some of its members may be, explores ab- 
normal phenomena, not in the interests of faith, but ( 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

of knowledge. Af;ain, the old inquirers were domin- 
ated by a belief in the devil. They saw witchcraft 

1 and demoniacal possession, where the moderns see 

\ hysterics and hypnotic conditions. 

For us the topic is rather akin to mythology; 
and ' folk-psychology,' as the Germans call 
We are interested, as will be shown, in a most 
curious question of evidence, and the value of evid- 
ence. It will again appear that the phenomena 
ported by Glanvill, More, Sinclair, Kirk, Telfair, 
Bovet, are identical with those examined by Messrs. 
Gurney, Myers, Kellar (the American professional 
conjurer), and many others. , The differences, though 
interesting, are rather temporary and accidental than 
essential. 

A few moments of attention to the table talk of 
the party assembled at Ragley will enable us to 
understand the aims, the methods, and the ideas of 
the old informal society. By a lucky accident, frag- 
ments of the conversation may be collected from 
Glanvill's Saddiicisvtus Triumphatits, ^ and from 
the correspondence of Glanvill, Henry More, and 
Robert Boyle. Mr. Boyle, among more tangible 
researches, devoted himself to collecting anecdotes, 
about the second sight. These manuscripts are 
not published in the six huge quarto volumes of 
Boyle's works; on the other hand, we possess Lord 
Tarbet's answer to his questions.^ Boyle, as his 
letters show, was a rather chary believer in witch- 
craft and possession. He referred Glanvill to his 
' Fourth edition, Londan, 1726. 
^In Kirk's Scent Canangnuieallli, 1691. London; Nutt, 1893. 



COMPARATIVE PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. 89 

kinsman, Lord Orrery, who had enjoyed an experi- 
ence not very familiar ; he had seen a gentleman's 
butler float in the air ! 

Now, by a great piece of good fortune, Mr. Great- 
rakes the fragrant and miraculous, had also been 
an eye-witness of this miracle, and was able to give 
Lady Conway and her guests the fullest information. 
As commonly happened in the seventeenth century, 
though not in ours, the marvel of the butler was 
mixed up with ordinary folk-lore. In the records 
and researches of the existing Society for Psychical 
Research, folk-lore and fairies hold no place. The 
Conformist, however, had this tale to tell : the 
butler of a gentleman unnamed, who lived near 
Lord Orrery's seat in Ireland, fell in, one day, with 
the good people, or fairies, sitting at a feast. The 
fairies, therefore, endeavoured to spirit him away, 
as later they carried off Mr. Kirk, minister of Aber- 
foyle, in 1692. Lord Orrery, most kindly, gave the 
butler the security of his castle, where the poor 
man was kept, ' under police protection,' and 
watched, in a large room. Among the spectators 
were Mr. Greatrakes himself, and two bishops, one 
of whom may have been Jeremy Taylor, an active 
member of the society. Late in the afternoon, the 
butler was 'perceived to rise from the ground, where- 
upon Mr. Greatrix and another lusty man clapt their 
hands over his shoulders, one of them before, and 
the other behind, and weighed him down with all 
their strength, but he was forcibly taken up from 
them ; for a considerable time he was carried in the 
air to and fro, over their heads, several of the 



company still running under him, to prevent him 
receiving hurt if he should fall ; ' so says Glanvill. 
Faithorne illustrates this pleasing circumstance by 
a picture of the company standing out, ready to 
'field' the butler, whose features display great con- 
cern.' 

Now we know that Mr. Greatrakes told this 
anecdote, at Ragley, first to Mrs. Foxcroft, and then 
to the company at dinner. Mr. Alfred Wallace, 
F.R.S., adduces Lord Orrery and Mr. Greatrakes as 
witnesses of this event in private life, Mr. Wallace, 
however, forgets to tell the world that the fairies, or 
good people, were, or were believed to be, the agents.^ 
Fairies still cause levitation in the Highlands. 
Campbell of Islay knew a doctor, one of whose 
patients had in vain tried to hold down a friend who 
was seized and carried to a distance of two miles by 
the sluagh. the fairj'folk.^ Glanvill admits that Lord 
Orreiy assured Lady Roydon, one of the party at 
Ragley, that the Irish tale was true : Henry More 
had it direct from Mr. Greatrakes. 

Here is a palpably absurd legend, but the reader 
is requested to observe that the phenomenon is said 
to have occurred in all ages and countries. We 

• In Ihe Salem witch mania, a similar case of levitation was 
reported by the Kev. Cotton Mather. He produced a cloud of wit- 
□essea, who could not hold the woman down. She would fly up, 
Mr. Mather sent the signed depositions to his opponent, Mr. Calef. 
But Calef would not believe, for, said he, ' the age of miracles is past '. 
Which was just the question at issue ! See Beaumonfs Treatise nf 
Sfirili, p. 148, London, 1705. 

^ Miracles and Modem Spiritunlisni, p. 7. London : Burns. 1875. 

"Popular Tales, iv. 340. 



COMPARATrV'E PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. QI 

can adduce the testimony of modem Australian 
blacks, of Greek philosophers, of Peru\nans just after 
the conquest by Pizarro, of the authors of Lives of 
the SainiSy of learned New England diWnes,^ of living 
observers in England, India, and America. The 
phenomenon is technically styled * levitation/ and in 
England was regarded as a proof either of witchcraft 
or of * possession'; in Italy was a note of sanctity ; in 
modem times is a peculiarity of * mediumship ' ; in 
Australia is a token of magical power ; in Zululand 
of skill in the black art; and, in Ireland and the West 
Highlands, was attributed to the guile of the fairies. 
Here are four or five distinct hypotheses. Part of 
our business, therefore, is to examine and compare 
the forms of a fable current in many lands, and 
reported to the circle at Ragley by the Miraculous 
Conformist. 

Mr. Greatrakes did not entertain Lady Conway 
and her friends with this marvel alone. He had 
been present at a trial for witchcraft, in Cork, on 
September ii, 1661. In this affair evidence was 
led to prove a story as common as that of ' levita- 
tion ' — namely, the mysterious throwing or falling 
of stones in a haunted house, or around the person 
of a patient bewitched. Cardan is expansive about 
this manifestation. The patient was Mary Longdon, 
the witch was Florence Newton of Youghal. Glanvill 
prints the trial from a document which he regards as 
official, but he did not take the trouble to trace Mr. 
Aston, the recorder or clerk (as Glanvill surmises), who 
signed every page of the manuscript. Mr. Alfred 
Wallace quotes the tale, without citing his authority. 



) COMMON-SENSE. 

The witnesses for the falling of stones round the 
bewitched gid were the maid herself, and her master, 
John Pyne, who deposed that she was ' much troubled 
with little stones that were thrown at her wherever 
she went, and that, after they had hit her, would fall 
on the ground, and then vanish, so that none of them 
could be found'. This peculiarity beset Mr, Stainton 
Moses, when he was fishing, and must have 'put 
down' the trout. Objects in the maid's presence, 
such as Bibles, would ' fly from her,' and she was 
bewitched, and carried off into odd places, like the 
butler at Lord Orrery's. Nicholas Pyne gave identi- 
cal evidence. At Ragley, Mr, Greatrakes declared 
that he was present at the trial, and that an awl 
would not penetrate the stool on which the unlucky 
enchantress was made to stand : a clear proof of 
guilt. 

Here, then, we have the second phenomenon 
which interested the circle at Ragley;,the Hying 
about of stones, of Bibles, and other movements of 
bodies. Though the whole affair may be called 
hysterical imposture by Mary Longdon (who vomited 
pins, and so forth, as was customary), we shall pre- 
sently trace the reports of similar events, among 
people of widely remote ages and countries, ' from 
China to Peru'. 

Among the guests at Ragley, as we said, was Dr. 
Joseph Glanviil, who could also teli strange tales at 
first hand, and from his own experience. He had 
investigated the case of the disturbances in Mr. 
Mompesson's house at Tedworth, which began in 
March, 1661. These events, so famous among our 



COMPARATIVE PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. 

ancestors, were precisely identical with what is re- 
ported by modern newspapers, when there is a 
'medium 'in a family. The troubles began with 
rappings on the walls of the house, and on a drum 
taken by Mr. Mompesson from a vagrant musician. 
This man seems to have been as much vexed as 
Parolles by the loss of his drum, and the Psychical 
Society at Ragley believed him to be a magician, 
who had bewitched the house of his oppressor. 
While Mrs. Mompesson was adding an infant to her 
family the noise ceased, or nearly ceased, just as, at 
Epworth, in the house of the Rev. Samuel Wesley, 
it never vexed Mrs. Wesley at her devotions. Later, 
at Tedworth, ' it followed and vexed the younger 
children, beating their bedsteads with that violence, 
that all present expected when they would fall in 
pieces'. ... It would lift the children up in their 
beds. Objects were moved : lights flitted around, 
and the Rev. Joseph Glanvill could assure Lady 
Conway that he had been a witness of some of these 
occurrences. He saw the ' little modest girls in the 
bed, between seven and eight years old, as I guessed '. 
He saw their hands outside the bed-clothes, and 
heard the scratchings above their heads, and felt 
' the room and windows shake very sensibly '. When 
he tapped or scratched a certain number of times, 
the noise answered, and stopped at the same number. 
Many more things of this kind Glanvill tells. He 
denies the truth of a report that an imposture was 
discovered, but admits that when Charles H. sent 
gentlemen to stay in the house, nothing unusual 
occurred. But these researchers stayed only for a 



M 



94 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

single night. He denied that any normal cause of 
the trouble was ever discovered. Glanvill told similar 
tales about a house at Welton, near Daventry, in 1658. 
Stones were thrown, and all the furniture joined in 
an irregular corroboree. Too late for Lady Conway's 
party was the similar disturbance at Qast's house of 
Little Burton, June, 1677. Here the careful student 
will note that ' they saw a hand holding a hammer, 
which kept on knocking'. This hand is as familiar 
to the research of the seventeenth as to that of the 
nineteenth century. We find it again in the cele- 
brated Scotch cases of Rerrick (1695), and of Glen- 
luce, while 'the Rev. James Sharp' {later Arch- 
bishop of St. Andrews), vouched for it, in 1659, in a 
tale told by him to Lauderdale, and by Lauderdale 
to the Rev. Richard Baxter.^ Glanvill also contri- 
butes a narrative of the very same description about 
the haunting of Mr. Paschal's house in Soper Lane, 
London : the evidence is that of Mr. Andrew Paschal, 
Fellow of Queen's College, Cambridge. In this case 
the trouble began with the an-ival and coincided with 
the stay of a gentlewoman, unnamed, 'who seemed 
to be principally concerned '. As a rule, in these 
legends, it is easy to find out who the ' medium ' 
was. The phenomena here were accompanied by 
' a cold blast or puff of wind,' which blew on the 
hand of the Fellow of Queen's College, just as it has 
often biown, in similar circumstances, on the hands 
of Mr. Crookes, and of other modern amateurs. It 
would be tedious to analyse all Glanvill's tales of 
'The anecdote is published by Charles Kiikpatrick Shacpe, in a 
letter of Lauderdale's, affixed ta Shaipe's edition of Law's Mcniarialli. 



1 



COMPARATIVE PSliCHICAL RESEARCH. 



93 



lappiDgs, and of volatile furniture. We shall see 
that, before bis time, as after it. precisely similar 
narratives attracted the notice of the curious, Glan- 
vill generally tries to get bis stories at first hand and 
signed by eye-witnesses. 

Lady Conway was not behind her guests in per- 
sonal experiences. Her ladyship was concerned with 
a good old-fashioned ghost. We say 'old-fashioned" 
of set purpose, because while modem tales of ' levi- 
tation' and flighty furniture, of flying stones, of 
rappings, of spectra! hands, of cold psychical winds, 
are exactly like the tales of old, a change, an ob- 
served change, has come over the ghost of the nine- 
teenth century. Readers of the Proceedings of the ' 
Psychical Society will see that the modem ghost is a ■ 
purposeless creature. He appears nobody knows i 
why; he has no message to deliver, no secret crime 
to reveal, no appointment to keep, no treasure to dis- 
close, no commissions to be executed, and, as an almost 
invariable rule, he does not speak, even if you speak : 
to him. The recent inquirers, notably Mr. Myers, 
remark with some severity on this vague and mean- 
ingless conduct of apparitions, and draw speculative 
conclusions to the effect that the ghost, as the Scotch 
say, 'is not all there '. But the ghosts of the seven- 
teenth century were positively garrulous. One re- 
markable specimen indeed behaved, at Valogne, more 
like a ghost of our time than of his own.^ But, as a 
common rule, the ghosts in whom Lady Conway's 
friends were interested had a purpose : some revealed 
the spot where a skeleton lay; some urged the pay- 
' Sec Ghosls before thi Law. 



ment of adebt, or the performance of a neglected duty. 
One modern spectre, reported by Mr. Myers, wandered 
disconsolate till a debt of three shillings and tenpence 
was defrayed.^ This is, perhaps, the lowest figure 
cited as a pretext for appearing. The ghost vouched 
for by Lady Conway was disturbed about a larger 
sum, twenty-eight shillings. She, an elderly woman, 
persecuted by her visits David Hunter, ' neat-herd at 
the house of the Bishop of Down and Connor, at 
Portmore, in 1663'. Mr. Hunter did not even know 
the ghost when she was alive ; but she made herself 
so much at home in his dwelling that 'his little dog 
would follow her as well as his master'. The ghost, 
however, was invisible to Mrs. Hunter. When Hun- 
ter had at last executed her commission, she asked 
him to lift her up in his arms. She was not substan- 
tial like fair Katie King, when embraced by Mr. Crookes, 
but ' felt just like a bag of feathers ; so she vanished, 
and he heard most delicate music as she went off over 
his head'. Lady Conway cross-examined Hunter on 
the spot, and expressed her belief in his narrative in 
a letter, dated Lisburn, April 29, 1663. It is true 
that contemporary sceptics attributed the phenomena 
to potheen, but, as Lady Conway asks, how could 
potheen tell Hunter about the ghost's debt, and re- 
veal that the money to discharge it was hidden under 
her hearthstone ? 

The scope of the Ragley inquiries may now be 
understood. It must not be forgotten that witch- 
craft was a topic of deep interest to these students. 
They solemnly quote the records of trials in which it 
'^Proceedings S. P. «., kv. 33. 



COMPARATIVE PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. 



97 



is perfectly evident that girls and boys, either in a 
spirit of wicked mischief, or suffering from hysterical 
illusions, make grotesque charges against poor old 
women. The witches always prick, pinch, and tor- 
ment their victims, being present to them, though in- 
visible to the bystanders. This was called 'spectral 
I evidence'; and the Mathers, during the fanatical 
I outbreaks at Salem, admit that this ' spectral evi- 
dence/ unsupported, is of no legal value. Indeed, 
taken literally, Cotton Mather's cautions on the sub- 
ject of evidence may almost be called sane and sen- 
sible. But the Protestant inquisitors always dis- 
covered evidence confirmatory. For example, a girl 
is screanting out against an invisible witch ; a man, 
to please her, makes a snatch at the empty air where 
she points, and finds in his hand a fragment of stuff, 
which again is proved to be torn from the witch's 
dress. It is easy to see how this trick could be played. 
Again, a possessed girl cries that a witch is torment- 
ing her with an iron spindle, grasps at the spindle 
(visible only to her), and, lo, it is in her hand, and is 
the property of the witch. Here is proof positive! 
lin, a girl at Stoke Trister, in Somerset, is be- 
witched by Elizabeth Style, of Bayford, widow. The 
rector of the parish, the Rev. William Parsons, de- 
poses that the girl, in a fit, pointed to different parts 
of her body, ' and where she pointed, he perceived a 
red spot to arise, with a small black in the midst of 
' it, like a small thorn ' ; and other evidence was given 
I to the same effect. The phenomenon is akin to 
many which, according to medical and scientific 
testimony, occur to patients in the hypnotic state. 



gn COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

The so-called stigmata of Louise Lateau, and of the 
shepherd boy put up by the Archbishop of Reims as 
a substitute for Joan of Arc, are a case in point. 
But Glanvill, who quotes the record of the trial 
(January, 1664), holds that witchcraft is proved by 
the coincidence of the witch's confession that she, 
the devil, and others made an image of the girl and 
pierced it with thorns ! The confession is a piece of 
pure folk-lore : poor old Elizabeth Style merely copies 
the statements of French and Scotch witches. The 
devil appeared as a handsome man, and as a black 
dog! Glanvill denies that she was tortured, or 
' watched ' — that is, kept awake till her brain reeled. 
But his own account makes it plain that she was 
' watched ' after her confession at least, when the 
devil, under the form of a butterfly, appeared in her 
cell. 

This rampant and mischievous nonsense was 
dear to the psychical inquirers of the Restoration; 
it was circulated by Glanvill, a Fellow of the Royal 
Society; by Henry More; by Sinclair, a professor 
in the University of Glasgow; by Richard Baxter, 
that glory of Nonconformity, who revels in the burn- 
ing of an 'old reading parson' — that is, a clergy- 
man who read the Homilies, under the Common- 
wealth. This unlucky old parson was tortured into 
confession by being 'walked' and 'watched' — 
that is, kept from sleep till he was delirious. Arch- 
bishop Spottiswoode treated Father Ogilvie. S.J., in 
the same abominable manner, till delirium super- 
vened. Church, Kirk, and Dissent have no right to 
throw the first stone at each other. 



Taking levitalion, haunting, disturbances, and 
apparitions, and leaWng 'telepathy' or second sight 
out of the list for the present, he who compares 
psychical research in the seventeenth and nineteenth 
centuries finds himself confronted by the problem 
hich everywhere meets the student of institutions 
and of mythology. The anthropologist knows that, 
if he takes up a new book of travels in the remotest 
lands, he wiU find mention of strange customs per- 
fectly familiar to him in other parts of the ancient 
and modern world. The mythologist would be 
surprised if he encountered in Papua or Central 
Africa, or Sakhalin, a perfectly ncii- myth. These 
uniformities of myth and custom are explained by 
the identical workings of the uncivilised intelligence 
on the same materials, and, in some cases, by 
borrowing, transmission, imitation. 

Now, some features in witchcraft admit of this 
explanation. Highland crofters, even now, perforate 
the image of an enemy with pins; broken bottle- 
ends or sharp stones are put, in Russia and in Aus- 
tralia, in the footprints of a foe, for the purpose of 
laming him ; and there are dozens of such practices, 
all founded on the theory of sympathy. Like affects 
like. What harms the effigy hurts the person whose 
effigy is burned or pricked. All this is perfectly 
intelligible. But, when we find savage 'birraarks' 
in Australia, fakirs in India, saints in medieval 
Europe, a gentleman's butler in Ireland, boys in 
Somerset and Midlothian, a young warrior in Zulu- 
land, Miss Nancy Wesley at Epworth in 1716, and 
Mr. Daniel Home in London in 1856-70, all triumph- 



4 



100 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

ing over the law of gravitation, all iloating in the 
air, how are we to expSain the uniformity of stories 
palpably ridiculous ? 

The evidence, it must be observed, is not merely 
that of savages, or of persons as uneducated and as 
superstitious as savages. The Australian birraark, 
who flies away up the tree, we may leave out of 
account. The saints, St. Francis and St, Theresa, 
are more puzzling, but miracles were expected from 
saints.' The levitated boy was attested to in a 
court of justice, and is designed by Faithorne in an 
illustration of Glanvill's book. He flew over a 
garden ! But witnesses in such trials were fanciful 
people. Lord Orrery and Mr. Greatrakes may have 
seen the butler float in the air — after dinner, The 
exploits of the Indian fakirs almost, or quite, over- 
come the scepticism of Mr. Max Miiller, in his Gifford 
Lectures on Psychological Religion. Living and 
honourable white men aver that they have seen the 
feat, examined the performers, and found no explana- 
tion; no wires, no trace of imposture. (The writer 
is acquainted with a well vouched for case, the 
witness an English officer.) Mr. Kellar, an American 
professional conjurer, and exposer of spiritualistic 
pretensions, bears witness, in the North American 
Review, to a Zulu case of 'levitation,' which actually 
surpasses the tale of the gentleman's butler in 
strangeness. Cieza de Leon, in his Travels, 
translated by Mr. Markham for the Hakluyt Society, 
brings a similar anecdote from early Peru, in 1549.* 
' See raany examples in Li Fiorette de Miner Sanio Francesco. 



COMPARATIVE PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. lOI 

Miss Nancy Wesley's case is vouched for (she and 
the bed she sat on both rose from the floor) by a 
letter from one of her family to her brother Samuel, 
printed in Southey's Life of Wesley, Finally, 
Lord Lindsay and Lord Adare published a state- 
ment that they saw Home float out of one window 
and in at another, in Ashley Place, S.W., on 
December i6, 1868. Captain Wynne, who was 
also there, * wrote to the Medium, to say I was 
present as a witness'.^ We need not heap up more 
examples, drawn from classic Greece, as in the in- 
stances of Abaris and lamblichus. We merely stand 
speechless in the presence of the wildest of all fables, 
when it meets us, as identical myths and customs 
do — not among savages alone, but everywhere, 
practically speaking, and in connection with bar- 
barous sorcery, with English witchcraft, with the 
saintliest of mediaeval devotees, with African warriors, 
with Hindoo fakirs, with a little English girl in a 
quiet old country parsonage, and with an enigmatic 
American gentleman. Many living witnesses, of 
good authority, sign statements about Home's levita- 
tion. In one case, a large table, on which stood a 
man of twelve stone weight, rose from the floor, and 
an eye-witness, a doctor, felt under the castors with 
his hands. 

Of all persons subject to * levitation,' Saint 
Joseph of Cupertino (1603-1663) was the most 
notable. The evidence is partly derived from testi- 
monies collected with a view to his canonisation, 
within two years after his death. There is a full 

^D, D. Home; his Life and Mission, p. 307, London, 1888. 



I02 COCii LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

account of his life and adventures in Ada Sanctorum.^ 
St. Joseph died, as we saw, in 1663, but the earliest 
biography of him, in Itahan, was not published 
till lifteen years later, in 1678. Unluckily the 
compiler of his legend in the Acta Sanctomiii was 
unable to procure this work, by Nutius, which might 
contain a comparatively slight accretion of myths. 
The next life is of 1722, and the author made use of 
the facts collected for Joseph's beatification. There 
is another life by Pastrovicchi, in 1753. He was 
canonised in that year, when all the facts were 
remote by about a century. 

Joseph's parents were paiiperes scd honcsti ; his 
father was a carpenter, his mother a woman of 
almost virulent virtue, who kept her son in great 
order. From the age of eight he was subject to 
cataleptic or epileptic fits and convulsions. After 
his novitiate he suffered from severe attacks of 
melancholia. His ' miracles ' attracting attention, 
he was brought before the Inquisition at Naples, as 
an impostor. He was sent to an obscure and remote 
monastery, and thence to Assisi, where he was 
harshly treated, and fell into Bunyan's Slough of 
Despond, haviny much conflict with Apollyon. 

He was thence called to Rome, where cardinals 
testify that, on hearing sacred names, he would give 
a yell, and fall into ecstasy. Returning to Assisi he 
was held in high honour, and converted a Hanover- 
ian Prince. He healed many sick people, and, 
having fallen into a river, came out quite dry. He 
could scarcely read, but was inspired with wonderful 
'Sept. iB, vol. v., i865. 



J 



COMPARATIVE PSVCHICAL RESEARCH, 



103 



I 



theological acuteness. He always yelled before 
falling into an ecstasy, afterwards, he was so much 
under the dominion of anaesthesia that hot coals, 
if applied to his body, produced no effect. Then he 
soared in air, now higher, now lower (a cardinal 
vouches for six inches), and in cere pcndulus hcerebat, 
like the gentleman's butler at Lord Orrery's. 

Seventy separate flights, in-doors and out of l 
doors, are recorded. In fact it was well to abstain j 
from good words in conversation with St. Joseph ; 
of Cupertino, for he would give a shout, on hearing i 
a pious observation, and fly up, after which social [ 
intercourse was out of the question. He was, in- , 
deed, prevented by his superiors from appearing at 
certain sacred functions, because his flights disturbed 
the proceedings, indeed everything was done by the 
Church to discourage him, but in vain. He explained 
his preliminary shout by saying that ' guns also 
make a noise when they go off",' so the Cardinal de 
Laurea heard him remark. He was even more 
fragrant than the Miraculous Conformist, or the 
late Mr. Stainton Moses, to whose seances scent was 
marvellously borne by 'spirits'. It must be re- 
membered that contemporary witnesses attest these 
singular circumstances in the evidence taken two 
years after his death, for the beatification of Joseph. 
From Assisi he was sent to various obscure convents, 
where his miracles were as remarkable as ever. One 
Christmas Eve, hearing sacred music, he flew up like 
a bird, from the middle of the church to the high 
altar, where he floated for a quarter of an hour, yet 
Qpset none of the candles. An insane nobleman 



"164 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE, 



was brought to him to be healed. Seizing the 
afflicted prince by the hair of the head, he uttered a 
shout, and soared up with the patient, who finally 
came down cured! Once he flew over a pulpit, and 
once more than eighty yards to a crucifix. This is 
probably 'a record'. When some men were elevat- 
ing a cross for a Calvary, and were oppressed by the 
weight, Joseph uttered a shriek, flew to them, and 
lightly erected the cross with his own hand. The 
flight was of about eighty yards. He flew up into 
a tree once, and perched on a bough, which quivered 
no more than if he had been a bird. A rather 
commonplace pious remark uttered in his presence 
was the cause of this exhibition. Once in church, 
he flew from his knees, caught a priest, lifted him up, 
and gyi^ated, Icetissimo raptu, in mid air. In the 
presence of the Spanish ambassador and many 
others, he once flew over the heads of the congrega- 
tion. Once he asked a priest whether the holy 
elements were kept in a particular place. ' Who 
knows ? ' said the priest, whereon Joseph soared over 
his head, remained kneeling in raid air, and came 
down only at the request of his ecclesiastical superior. 
Joseph was clairvoyant, and beheld apparitions, but 
on the whole (apart from his moral excellence) his 
flights were his most notable accomplishment. On 
one occasion he 'casual remarked to a friend,' 
'what an infernal smell' [in/enialis odor), and then 
nosed out a number of witches and warlocks who 
were compounding drugs : ' standing at some con- 
siderable distance, standing, in fact, in quite another 
street '. 



COMPARATIVE PSYCHICAL RESEARCH, 

lamblichus, in the letter to Porphyry, describes 
such persons as St. Joseph of Cupertino, ' They 
have been known to be lifted up into the air. . . . 
The subject of the afflatus has not fett the applica- 
tion of lire. . . . The more ignorant and mentally 
imbecile a youth may be, the more freely will the 
divine power be made manifest.' Joseph was ignor- 
ant, and 'enfeebled by vigil and fasts,' so Joseph was 
' insensible of the application of fire,' and ' was lifted 
up into the air'. Yet the cardinals, surgeons, and 
other witnesses were not thinking of the pagan 
lamblichus when they attested the accomplishments 
of the saint. Whence, then, comes the uniformity 
of evidence? 

The sceptical Calef did not believe in these things, 
because they are 'miracles,' that is, contrary to ex- 
perience. But here is experience enough to which 
they are not contrary. 

There are dozens of such depositions, and here 
it is that the student of testimony and of belief finds 
himself at a deadlock. Believe the evidence we 
cannot, yet we cannot doubt the good faith, the 
veracity of the attesting witnesses. Had we only 
savage, or ancient and uneducated testimony, we 
might say that the uniformity of myths of levitation 
is easily explained- The fancy wants a marvel, it 
readily provides one by positing the infraction of the 
most universally obvious law, that of gravitation. 
Men don't fiy ; let us say that a man flew, like Abaris 
on his arrow ! This is rudimentary, but then wit- 
nesses whose combined testimony would prove 
almost anything else, declare that they saw the feat 



io6 



^■E AND COMMON-E 



performed. Till we can find some explanation of 
these coincidences of testimony, it is plain that a 
province in psychology, in the relations between facts 
as presented to and as represented by mankind, re- 
mains to be investigated. Of all persons who have 
been levitated since St. Joseph, a medium named 
Eglinton was most subject to this infirmity. In a 
work, named There is no Death, by Florence 
Marryat, the author assures us that she has fre- 
quently observed the phenomenon. But Mr. Eglin- 
ton, after being ' investigated ' by the Psychical 
Society, ' retired,' as Mr. Myers says, ' into private 
life'. The tales told about him by spiritualists are 
of the kind usually imparted to a gallant, but pro- 
verbially confiding, arm of. Her Majesty's service. 
As for Lord Orrery's butler, and the others, there 
are the hypotheses that a cloud of honourable and 
sane witnesses lied ; that they were uniformly 
hallucinated, or hypnotised, by a glamour as ex- 
traordinary as the actual miracle would be ; or again, 
that conjuring of an unexampled character could 
be done, not only by Home, or Eglinton, in a room 
which may have been prepared, but by Horae, by a 
2ulu, by St. Joseph of Cupertino, and by naked 
fakirs, in the open air. Of all these theories that of 
glamour, of hypnotic illusion, is the most specious. 
Thus, when Ibn Batuta, the old Arabian traveller, 
tells us that he saw the famous rope-trick performed 
in India^men climbing a rope thrown into the 
air, and cutting each other up, while the bodies revive 
and reunite — he very candidly adds that his com- 
panion, standing by, saw nothing out of the way, 



COMPARATIVE PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. I07 

and declared that nothing occuiTed.' This clearly 
implies that Ibn Batuta was hypnotised, and that 
his companion was not. But Dr. Carpenter's attempt 
to prove that one witness saw nothing, while Lord 
Lindsay and Lord Adare saw Home float out of one 
window, and in by another, turns out to be erroneous. 
The third witness, Captain Wynne, confirmed the 
statement of the other gentlemen. 

We now approach the second class of marvels 
which regaled the circle at Ragley, namely, 'Alleged 
movements of objects without contact, occurring 
not in the presence of a paid medium,' and with 
these we shall e.'^amine rappings and mysterious 
noises. The topic began to attract modem attention 
when table-turning was fashionable. But in common 
table-tuming there was contact, and Faraday easily 
demonstrated that there was conscious or unconscious 
pushing and muscular exertion. In 1871 Mr. Crookes 
made laboratory experiments with Home, using 
mechanical tests.^ He demonstrated, to his own 
satisfaction, that in the presence of Home, even 
when he was not in physical contact with the object, 
the object moved : e pur si muove. He published 
a reply to Dr. Carpenter's criticism, and the common- 
sense of ordinary readers, at least, sees no flaw in 
Mr. Crookes's method and none in his argument. 
The experiments of the modern Psychical Society, 
with paid mediums, produced results, in Mr. Myers's 
opinion, ' not wholly unsatisfactory,' but far from 
leading to an affirmative conclusion, if by 'satis- 

' See Colonel Yule's Marco Polo. 

^Quarterly yournal of Sciincc, July, 1871. 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

factory' Mr. Myers means 'affirmative'.^ The in- 
vestigations of Mrs. Sidgwick were made under the 
mediiimship of Miss Kate Fox (Mrs. Jencken). 
This lady began the modern ' spiritualism ' when 
scarcely older than Mr. Mompesson's ' two modest 
little girls,' and was accompanied by phenomena 
like those of Tedvvorth. But, in Mrs, Sidgwick's 
presence the phenomena were of the most meagre ; 
and the reasoning faculties of the mind decline to 
accept them as other than perfectly normal. The 
society tried Mr. Eglinton, who once was ' levitated' 
in the presence of Mr. Kellar, the American con- 
jurer, who has publicly described feats like those of 
the gentleman's butler.- But, after his dealings 
with the society, Mr. Eglinton has left the scene. ^ 
The late Mr. Davey also produced results like Mr. 
Eglinton's by confessed conjuring. 

Mr. Myers concludes that 'it does not seem worth 
while, as a rule, to examine the testimony to physical 
marvels occurring in the presence of professional 
mediums'. He therefore collects evidence in the 
article quoted, for physical marvels occurring where 
there is no paid medium. Here, as in the business of 
levitation, the interest of the anthropologist and myth- 
ologist lies in the uniformity and identity of narratives 
from all countries, climates, and ages. Among the 
earliest rappings with which we chance to be fami- 
liar are those reported by Froissart in the case of 
the spirit Orthon, in the fourteenth century. The 

' Protcedingi S. P. R., xix. 146. 
'North American RcvUai, 1893. 
' pTocttdingt S. P. R., x, 45-100 ; xix. 147. 



COMPARATIVE PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. lOQ 

tale had become almost 2i fabliau, but any one who 
reads the amusing chapter will see that it is based 
on a belief in disturbances like those familiar to 
Glanvill and the Misses Fox. Cieza de Leon (1549) in 
the passage already quoted, where he describes the 
levitated Cacique of Pirza, in Popyan, adds that * the 
Christians saw stones falling from the air * (as in 
the Greatrakes tale of the Youghal witch), and 
declares that, 'when the chief was sitting with a 
glass of liquor before him, the Christians saw the 
glass raised up in the air and put down empty, and 
a short time afterwards the wine was again poured 
into the cup from the air*. Mr. Home once equalled 
this marvel, ^ and Ibn Batuta reports similar occur- 
rences, earlier, at the court of the King of Delhi. 
There is another case in Histoire Prodigieuse d'une 
jeune Fille agitee d'un Esprit fanta$tique et invis- 
ible.^ A bourgeois of Bonneval was beset by a 
rapping rattle of a sprite. * At dinner, when he 
would lay his hand on a trencher, it was carried off 
elsewhere, and the wineglass, when he was about 
drinking, was snatched from his hand.' So Mr. 
Wesley's trencher was set spinning on the table, 
when nobody touched it ! In such affairs we may 
have the origin of the story of the Harpies at the 
court of Phineus. 

In China, Mr. Dennys tells how * food placed on 
the table vanished mysteriously, and many of the 
curious phenomena attributed to ghostly interference 
took place,' so that the householder was driven from 

^ Incidents in my Life, i, 170. 

2 A Paris, chez la Veuve du Carroy, 1621. 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

house to house, and finally into a temple, Jn 1874, 
and all this after the death of a favourite but ag- 
grieved monkey I ' ' Thvowinfj down crockery, 
trampling on the floor, etc. — such pranks as have 
attracted attention at home, are not unknown. . . . 
I must confess that in China, as elsewhere, these 
occurrences leave a bona fide impression of the 
marvellous which can neither be explained nor re- 
jected'.^ 

We have now noted these alleged phenomena, 
literally 'from China to Peru'. Let us ne.vt take 
an old French case of a noisy sprite in the nunnery 
of St. Pierre de Lyon. The account is by Adrien de 
Montalembert, almoner to Francis L^ The BibHo- 
graphy of this very rare tract is curious and deserves 
attention. When Lenglet Dufresnoy was compiling, 
in ly^i, his Dissertations stir les Apparitions he re- 
printed the tract from the Paris quarto of 1528, in 
black letter. This example had been in the Tellier 
collection, and Dufresnoy seems to have borrowed it 
from the Royal Convent of St. Genevieve. Know- 
ing that Cardinal Tencin had some acquaintance 
with the subject, Dufresnoy wrote to him, and 
publishes (vol. i. cxli.) his answer, dated October 18, 
1751, Lyons. The cardinal replied that, besides the 
Paris edition of 1528, there was a Rouen reprint, of 

> Polk-lori 0/ CliiHa, 1876, p. 79. 

s O^ «(.,?. 74- 

' Paris. Quarto. Black letter. i^zS. The original is extremEly 
rare. We quote from a copy once in the Tellier collection, reprinted 
in Recucil dc Disscrtutions Anciennes et NouvelUs siit Us Appari- 
tions. Leloup: Avignon, 1751, vol. ii. pp. 1-87. 



J 



COMPARATIVE PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. Ill 

1529, by Rolin Gautier, with enf;ravings. Brunei 
says, that there are engravings in the Paris edition 
of 1538, perhaps these were absent from the Tellier 
example. That of Rouen, which Cardinal Tencin 
collated, was in the Abbey of St. Peter, in Lyons. 
Some leaves had been thumbed out of existence, and 
their place was supplied in manuscript. The only 
difference was in chapter sxviii. where the printed 
Rouen text may have varied. In the MS. at all 
events, it is stated that on March 21, the spirit of 
Sister Alix de Telieux struck thirty-three great strokes 
on the refectory of her convent, ' mighty and marvel- 
lous,' implying that her thirty-three years of purgatory 
were commuted into thirty-three days. A bright 
light, scarcely endurable, then appeared, and re- 
mained for some eight minutes. The nuns then 
went into chapel and sang a Te Deum. 

At the end of the volume, a later hand added, in 
manuscript, that the truth of the contemporary 
record was confirmed by the tradition of the oldest 
sisters who had received it from eye-witnesses of the 
earlier generation. The writer says that she had 
great difficulty in finding the printed copy, but that 
when young, in 1630, she received the tale from a 
nun, then aged ninety-four. This nun would be 
born in 1536, ten years after these events. She got 
the story from her aunt, a nun, Gabrielle de Beaude- 
duit, qui etoit de ce lems-la. There is no doubt that 
the sisters firmly and piously believed in the story, 
which has the contemporary evidence of Adrien de 
Montalembert. Dufresnoy learned that a manu- 
script copy of the tract was in the library of the 



112 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SBNSE. 

Jesuits of Lyons. He was unaware of an edition in 
i2mo of 1580, cited by Brunet. 

To come to the story, one of our earliest examples 
of a 'medium,' and of communications by raps. The 
nunnery was reformed in 1516. A pretty sister, Ahx de 
Telieux, Hed with some of the jewels, lived a 'gay' 
life, and died wretchedly in 1524. ' She it was, as is 
believed, who haunted a sister named Anthoinette de 
GrolSe, a girl of eighteen. The disturbance began 
with a confused half-dream. The girl fancied that 
the sign of the cross was made on her brow, and a kiss 
impressed on her lips, as she wakened one night. 
She thought this was mere illusion, but presently, 
when she got up, she heard, ' comme soubs ses pieds 
frapper aucuns petis coups," 'rappings,' as if at the 
depth of four inches underground. This was exactly 
what occurred to Miss Hetty Wesley, at Epworth, in 
1716, and at Rio de Janeiro to a child named ' C 
in Professor Alexander's narrative.^ Montalembert 
says, in 1528, ' I have heard these rappings many a 
time, and. in reply to my questions, so many strokes 
as I asked for were given '. Montalembert received 
nf ormation (by way of raps) from the 'spirit,' about 
matters of importance, qui ne pouvroient estre cogneus 
de nutrielle creature. ' Certainly,' as he adds, 'people 
have the best right to believe these things who have 
seen and heard them.' 

The rites of the Church were conferred in the 
most handsome manner on the body of Sister Alix, 



^Proceedings S. P. R., 
of a gentleman occupying ' , 
The date was 1B8S. 



responsible position 



i Davis, daughter 
IS a telegraphist'. 



COMPARATIVE PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. 

which was disinterred and buried in her convent. 
Exorcisms and interrogations of the spirit were 
practised. It merely answered questions by rapping 
'Yes,' or 'No'. On one occasion Sister Anthoi- 
nette was ' levitated '. Finally, the spirit appeared 
bodily to her, said farewell, and disappeared after 
making an extraordinary fracas at matins. Mon- 
talembert conducted the religious ceremonies. One 
case of hysteria was developed ; the sufferer was a 
novice. Of course it was attributed to diabolical 
possession. The whole story, in its pleasant old 
French, has an agreeable air of good faith. But 
what interests us is the remarkable analogy between 
the Lyons rappings and those at Epworth, Tedworth, 
and countless other cases, old or of yesterday. We 
can now establish a catena of rappings and pour 
prendre date, can say that communications were es- 
tablished, through raps, with a so-called ' spirit,' 
more than three hundred years before the ' Roches- 
ter knockings' in America. Very probably wider 
research would discover instances prior to that of 
Lyons ; indeed, Wierus, in De Praestigiis Dacmonum, 
writes as if the custom was common- 
It is usual to explain the raps by a theory that 
the 'medium' produces thera through cracking his, 
or her, knee-joints. It may thus be argued that 
Sister Anthoinette discovered this trick, or was 
taught the trick, and that the tradition of her per- 
formance, being widely circulated in Montalembert's 
quarto, and by oral report, inspired later rappers, 
such as Miss Kate Fox, Miss ' C Davis, Miss 
Hetty Wesley, the gentlewoman at Mr. Paschal's, 



NE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

Mr. Mompesson's ' modest little girls,' Daniel 
Home, and Miss Margaret Wilson of Galashiels. 
Miss Wilson's uncle came one day to Mr. Wilkie, 
the minister, and told him the devil was at his house, 
for, said he, 'there is an odd knocking about the 
bed where my niece lies '. Whereupon the minister 
went with him, and found it so. ' She, rising from 
her bed, sat down to supper, and from below there 
was such a knocking up as bred fear to all that were 
present. This knocking was just under her chair, 
where it was not possible for any mortal to knock 
up.' When Miss Wilson went to bed, and was in 
a deep sleep, ' her body was so lifted up that many 
strong men were not able to keep it down'.^ The 
explanation about cracking the knee-joints hardly 
covers the levitations, or accounts for the tremendous 
noise which surrounded Sister Anthoinette at matins, 
or for the bright light, a common spiritualistic 
phenomenon, Margaret Wilson was about twelve 
years of age. If it be alleged that little girls have 
a traditional method of imposture, even that is a 
curious and interesting fact in human nature. 

As regards imposture, there exists a singular record 
of a legal process in Paris, 1534.^ 

It may have been observed that the Lyons affair 
was useful to the Church, as against ' the damnable 
sect of Lutherans,' because Sister Alix attested the 
existence of purgatory. No imposture was detected, 

^Satan's Invisible World Discovered. Edinburgh: Reid, 1685. 
Pp. 67-69. 

"Manuscripl 7170, A, de la Bibliotlieque du Roi. Disscrlalions, 

ut iufra, \oi. i. pp. 95-129. 



COMPARATIVE PSYCHICAL KESEARCH. II5 

and no reader of Montalembert can doubt his good 
faith, nor the sincerity of his kindness and piety. But 
such a set of circumstances might provoke imitation. 
Of fraudulent imitation the Franciscans of Orleans 
were accused, and for this crime they were severely 
punished. We have the Arrest des Commissaires du 
CoHseil d'etat dii Roi, from MS. 7170, A, of the 
BiblJothfique du Roi.' We have also allusions in the 
Franciscaniis, a satire in Latin hexameter by George 
Buchanan. Finally, we have versions in Lavaterus, 
and in Wierus, Dc Curat. Laes. Malcficio (Amsterdam, 
1660, p. 422). Wierus, born 1515, heard the story 
when with Sleidan at Orleans, some years after 
the events. He gives the version of Sleidan, a 
notably Protestant version. Wierus is famous for 
his spirited and valuable defence of the poor women 
then so frequently burned as witches. He either 
does, or pretends to believe in devils, diabolical 
possession, and e.\orcism, but the exorcist, to be 
respectable, must be Protestant. Probably Wierus 
was not so credulous as he assumes to be, and a point 
of irony frequently peeps out. The story as told by 
Sleidan differs from that in the official record. In 
this document Adam Fum^e, counsellor of the king, 
announces that the Franciscans of Orleans have 
informed the king that they are vexed by a spirit, 
which gives itself out by signs (rappings), as the 
wife of Francois de St. Mesmin, Provost of Orleans. 
They ask the king to take cognisance of the matter. 
On the other side, St. Mesmin declares that the 
Franciscans have counterfeited the affair in hope 
* Dufresnoy, op. dt.. i. 95-129. 



COCK LANE ADD COMMON-SENSE. 

of 'black-mailing' him. The king, therefore, ap- 
points FurnSe to inquire into the case. Thirteen 
friars are lying in prison in Paris, where they have 
long been ' in great wretchedness and poverty, and 
perishing of hunger,' a pretty example of the law's 
delay. A commission is to tiy the case (November, 
1534). The trouble had begun on February 22, 1533 
(old style), when Father Pierre d' Arras at five a.m. 
was called into the dormitory of 'les eofans,' — 
novices, — with holy water and everything proper. 
Knocking was going on, and by a system of knocks, 
the spirit said it wanted its body to be taken out of 
holy ground, said it was Madame St. Mesmin, and was 
damned for Lutheranism and extravagance ! The ex- 
periment was repeated before churchmen and laymen, 
but the lay obseiTers rushed up to the place v/hence 
the knocks came, where they found nothing. They hid 
some one there, after which there was no knocking. 
On a later day, the noises as in Cock Lane and else- 
where, began by scratching, " M. I'Official," the bishop's 
vicar, ' ouit gratter, qui etoit le commencement de 
ladite accoutummee tumulte dudit Esprit '. But no 
replies were given to questions, which the Fran- 
ciscans attributed to the disturbance of the day before, 
and the breaking into various places by the people. 
One Alicourt seems to have been regarded as the 
' medium,' and the sounds were heard as in Cock 
Lane and at Tedworth when he was in bed. Later 
experiments gave no results, and the friars were 
severely punished, and obliged to recant their 
charges against Madame de Mesmin. The case, 
scratches, raps, false accusations and all, is parallel 



COMPARATIVE PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. II7 

to that of the mendacious * Scratching Fanny/ 
examined by Dr. Johnson and Douglas, Bishop of 
Salisbury. In that affair the child was driven by 
threats to make counterfeit noises, but, as to the 
method of imposture at Orleans, nothing is said in 
the contemporary legal document. 

We now turn to the account by Sleidan, in Wierus. 
The provost's wife had left directions for a cheap funeral 
in the Franciscan Church. This economy irritated 
the Fathers, who only got six pieces of gold, * having 
expected much greater plunder '. ' Colimannus ' 
(Colimant), an exorcist named in the process, was 
the ringleader. They stationed a lad in the roof 
of the church, who rapped with a piece of wood, and 
made a great noise * when they mumbled their 
prayers at night *. St. Mesmin appealed to the 
king, the Fathers were imprisoned, and the youth 
was kept in Fumee's house, and plied with questions. 
He confessed the trick, and the friars were punished. 
Of all this confession, and of the mode of imposture, 
nothing is said in the legal process. From the 
whole affair came a popular saying, c*est Vcsprit 
d' Orleans, when any fable was told. Buchanan talks 
of cauta parum pietas mfraude paranda. 

The evidence, it may be seen, is not very co- 
herent, and the Franciscans mav have been the 
deceived, not the deceivers.^ Wierus himself admits 
that he often heard a brownie in his father's house, 
which frightened him not a little, and Georgius 
Pictorius avers that a noisy spirit haunted his uncle*s 
house for thirty years, a very protracted practical 

^ Compare Bastian, Mensch,, ii. 393, cited by Mr, Tylor., 



ii8 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 



joke, if it was a practical joke.^ This was a stone- 
throwing demon. 

A larfje book might easily be filled with old 
stories of mysterious flights of stones, and volatile 
chairs and tables. The ancient mystics of the 
Levant were acquainted with the phenomena, as 
lamblichus shows. The Eskimo knew them well. 
Gianvill is rich in examples, the objects iJying about 
in presence of a solitary spectator, who has called 
at a "haunted house,' and sometimes the events 
accompany the presence of a single individual, who 
may, or may not be a convulsionary or epileptic. 
Sometimes they befall where no individua! is suspected 
of constitutional electricity or of imposture. 

We may select a lauf:;hable example from a rare 
tract, ' An authentic, candid, and circumstantial 
narrative of the astonishing transactions at Stockwell, 
in the county of Surrey, on Monday and Tuesday, 
theSthandyth of January, 1772. Published with the 
consent and approbation of the family and other 
parties concerned, to authenticate which, the original 
copy is signed by them. London, 1772, printed for 
J. Marks, bookseller, in St, Martin's Lane.' 

The dramatis pcnome are old Mr.s. Golding, of 
Stockwell parish, ' a gentlewoman of unblemished 
honour and character'; Mrs, Pain, her niece, a 
farmer's wife, ' respected in the parish ' ; Mary 
Martin, her servant, previously with Mrs. Golding ; 
Richard Fowler, a labourer, living opposite Mrs. 
Pain ; Sarah Fowier his wife — ^all these sign the 

^ Dc Materia Daemon. Isagagf, p. 539. Af. Corn, Agiipp., De 
Occult. Pkilosoph. Lyons, l5oo. 



COMPARATrVE PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. 



iig 



document, — jnd Ann Robinson, Mrs. Golding's maid, 
just entered on her service. Ann does 7iot sign. 

The trouble began at ten a.m. on January 6, 
when Mrs. Golding heard a great smash of crockery 
an event ' most incident to maids '. The lady went 
into the kitchen, when plates began to fall from the 
dresser ' while she was there and nobody near them '. 
Then a clock tumbled down, so did a lantern, a pan 
of salt beef cracked, and a carpenter, Rowlidge, 
suggested that a recent addition of a room above 
had shaken the foundation of the house. Mrs. 
Golding rushed into the house of Mr. Gresham, her 
next neighbour, and fainted. Meanwhile Ann 
Robinson was ' mistress of herself, though china 
fall,' and seemed in no hurry to leave the threatened 
dwelling. The niece of Mrs. Golding, Mrs. Pain, 
was sent for to Mr. Gresham's, Mrs, Golding was 
bled, when, lo, 'the blood sprang out of the basin 
upon the floor, and the basin broke to pieces! ' A 
bottle of rum, of sympathetic character, also burst 
Many of Mrs. Golding's more fragile effects had been 
carried into Mr. Gresham's : the glasses and china 
first danced, and then fell off the side-board and 
broke. Mrs. Golding, ' her mind one confused 
chaos,' next sought refuge at Mr. Mayling's for three- 
quarters of an hour. Here nothing unusual occurred, 
but, at Mr. Gresham's (where Ann Robinson was 
packing the remains of her mistress's portable 
property) a ' mahogany waiter,' a quadrille box, a jar 
of pickles and a pot of raspberry jam shared the 
common doom. ' Their end was pieces.' Mrs. Pain 
now hospitably conveyed her aunt to her house at 



120 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

Rush Common, 'hoping all was overi. This was 
about two in the afternoon. 

At eight in the evening, the whole row of pewter 
dishes, bar one, fell from a shelf, rolled about a little, 
and ' as soon as they were quiet, turned upside down ; 
they were then put upon the dresser, and went 
through the same a second time '. Then of two eggs, 
one ' flew oS", crossed the kitchen, struck a cat on 
the head, and then burst in pieces '. A pestle and a 
mortar presently 'jumped six feet from the floor '. 
The glass and crockery were now put on the floor, 
'he that is down need fear no fall,' but the objects 
began to dance, and tumble about, and then broke 
to pieces. A china bowl jumped eight feet but was 
not broken. However it tried again, and succeeded. 
Candlesticks, tea-kettles, a tumbler of rum and water, 
two hams, and a flitch of bacon joined in the corro- 
boree. ' Most of the genteel families around were 
continually sending to inquire after them, and 
whether all was over or not,' All this while, Ann 
was 'walking backwards and forwards, nor could 
they get her to sit down, except for half an hour, 
at prayers, 'then all was quiet'. She remarked, 
with stoicism, 'these things could not be helped'. 
Fowler came in at ten, but fled in a fright at one in 
the morning. By five, Mrs. Golding summoned Mrs, 
Pain, who had gone to bed, 'all the tables, chairs, 
drawers, etc., were tumbling about '. 

They rushed across to Fowler's where, as soon 
as Ann arrived, the old game went on. Fowler, 
therefore, like the landlord in the poem, ' did plainly 
say as how he wished they'd go away,' at the same 



COMPARATIVE PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. 121 

time asking Mrs. Golding ' whether or not, she had 
been guilty of some atrocious crime, for which 
providence was determined to pursue her on this 
side the grave,' and to breait crockery till death 
put an end to the stupendous Nemesis. ' Having 
hitherto been esteemed a most deserving person,' 
Mrs. Golding replied, with some natural warmth, 
that 'her conscience was quite clear, and she could as 
well wait the will of providence in her own house as 
in any other place,' she and the maid went to her 
abode, and there everything that had previously 
escaped was broken, ' A nine-gallon cask of beer 
that was in the cellar, the door being open and 
nobody near it, turned upside down'; 'a pail of 
water boiled like a pot". So Mrs. Golding discharged 
Miss Ann Robinson, and that is all. 

At Mrs. Golding's they took up three, and at 
Mrs. Pain's two pails of the fragments that were 
left. The signatures follow, appended on January ii. 

The tale has a sequel. In 1S17 an old Mr. 
Braidley, who loved his joke, told Hone that he knew 
Ann, and that she confessed to having done the tricks 
by aid of horse-hairs, wires and other simple ap- 
pliances. We have not Mr, Braidley's attested 
statement, but Anil's character as a Medium is under 
a cloud. Have all other Mediums secret wires? 
{Every-day Book. i. 62.) 

Ann Robinson, we have seen, was a tranquil and 
philosophical maiden. Not so was another person 
who was equally active, ninety years earlier. 

Bovet, in his Pandtemonium (1684), gives an 
account of the Demon of Spraiton, in 1682. His 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

authorities were 'J. G.. Esquire,' a near neighbour 
to the place, the Rector of Barnstaple, and other 
witnesses. The 'medium' was a young servant 
man, appropriately named Francis Fey, and em- 
ployed in the household of Sir Philip Furze. Now, 
this young man was subject to ' a kind of trance, or 
estatick fit,' and ' part of his body was, occasionally, 
somewhat benumbed and seemingly deader than the 
other'. The nature of Fey's case, physically, is 
clear. He was a convulsionary, and his head would 
be found wedged into tight places whence it could 
hardly be extracted. From such a person the long 
and highly laughable tale of ghosts (a male ghost 
and a jealous female ghost) which he told does not 
much win our acceptance. True, Mrs. Thomasin 
Gidley, Anne Langdon, and a little child also saw the 
ghost in various forms. But this was probably mere 
fancy, or the hallucinations of Fey were infectious. 
But objects flew about in the young man's presence. 
' One of his shoe-strings was observed (without the 
assistance of any hand) to come of its own accord 
out of his shoe and fling itself to the other side of 
the room ; the other was crawling after it (!) but a 
maid espj'ing that, with her hand drew it out, and it 
clasp'd and curl'd about her hand like a living eel or 
serpent. A barrel of salt of considerable quantity 
hath been observed to march from room to room 
without any human assistance,' and so forth.^ 

It is hardly necessary to add more modern in- 
stances. The ' electric girl ' AngdHque Cottin, who 

' Aubrey gives a variant in hia Miscellanies, on the authority of 
the Vicar of Barnstaple. He calls Fey ' Fry '. 



COMPARATIVE PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. 123 

was a rival of Ann Robinson, had her powers well 
enough attested to arouse the curiosity of Arago. 
But, when brought from the country to Paris, her 
power, or her artifice, failed. 

It is rather curious that tales of volatile furniture 
are by no means very common in trials for witch- 
craft. The popular belief was, and probably still is, 
that a witch or warlock could throw a spell over an 
enemy so that his pots, and pans, tables and chairs, 
would skip around. The disturbances of this variety, 
in the presbyterj' at Cidevitle, in Seine Inferieure 
(1850), came under the eye of the law, because a 
certain shepherd injudiciously boasted that he had 
caused them by his maf;ic art.^ The cure, who was 
the victim, took him at his word, and the shepherd 
swain lost his situation. He then brought an 
action for defamation of character, but was non-suited, 
as it was proved that he had been the fanfaron of his 
own vices. In Froissart's amusing story of Orthon, 
that noisy sprite was hounded on by a priest. At 
Tedworth, the owner of the drum was ' wanted ' on 
a charge of sorcery as the cause of the phenomena. 
The Wesleys suspected that their house was be- 
witched. But examples in witch trials are not usual. 
Mr. Graham DalyeH, however, gives one case, ' the 
firlote rynning about with the stuff popling,* on the 
floor of a barn, and one where ' the sive and the 
wecht dancit throw the hous '.^ 

' The Devonshire case, ' Story of a Something," in Miss O'Neill's 
Devonshire Idylls, ia attested by a siirviving witness. 

" Trials of Isobell Young, rClg, and of Jonet Thomson, Feb. 7, 
1643. Darkir Superstitioni of Scotland, p. 593. 



124 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

A clasped knife opened in the pocket of Chris- 
tina Shaw, and her glove falling, it was lifted by a 
hand invisible to several persons present. One is 
reminded of the nursery rhyme,^' the dish it ran 
after the spoon '. In the presence of Home, even a 
bookcase is said to have forgotten itself, and com- 
mitted the most deplorable excesses. In the article 
of Mr. Myers, already cited, we find a table which 
jumps by the bedside of a dying man,^ A handbag 
of Miss Power's flies from an arm-chair, and hides 
under a table; raps are heard; all this when Miss 
Power is alone. Mr. H. W. Gore Graham sees a 
table move about. A heavy table of Mr. G, A. 
Armstrong's rises high in the air. A tea-table ' runs 
after' Professor Alexander, and 'attempts to hem me 
in,' this was at Rio de Janeiro, in the Davis family, 
where raps ' ranged from hardly perceptible ticks up 
to resounding blows, such as might be struck by a 
wooden mallet '. A Mr. H. falls into convulsions, 
during which all sorts of things fly about. All these 
stories closely correspond to the tales in Increase 
Mather's Remarkable Providences in New Bttf^land, 
in which the phenomena sometimes occur in the 
presence of an epileptic and convulsed boy, about 
r68o. To take one classic French case, Segrais 
declares that a M. Patris was lodged in the ChSteau 
d'Egmont. At dinner-time, he went into the room 
of a friend, whom he found lost in the utmost 
astonishment. A huge book, Cardan's De Subiili- 
taie, had fiown at him across the room, and the leaves 
had turned, under invisible fingers ! There are 
' WtneBB, Rev. E, T. Vaughan, King's Langley. 1S84. 



COMPARATIVE PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. 



125 



plenty of bogles in that book. M. Patris laughed 
at this tale, and went into the gallery, when a 
lar^e chair, so heavy that two men could scarcely 
lift it, shook itself and came at him. He remon- 
strated, and the chair returned to its usual position. 
'This made a deep impression on M, Patris, and 
I contributed in no slight degree to make him a 
( converted character' — a lefaire devenir devote 

Tales like this, with that odd uniformity of tone 
and detail which makes them curious, might be 
collected from old literature to any extent. Thus, 
among the sounds usually called 'rappings,' Mr. 
Crookes mentions, as matter within his own experi- 
ence, 'a cracking like that heard when a frictional 
machine is at work '. Now, as may be read in 
Southey's Life of We^hy and in Clarke's Memoirs 
of the Wesleys, this was the very noise which usually 
heralded the arrival of 'Jeffrey,' as they called the 
Epworth 'spirit'.- It has been alleged that the 
charming and ill-fated Hetty Wesley caused the 
disturbances. If so (and Dr. Salmon, who supports 
this thesis, does not even hazard a guess as to the 
tnodus operandi), Hetty must have been familiar with 
almost the whole extent of psychical literature, for 
she scarcely left a single phenomenon unrepresented, 
It does not appear that she supplied visible ' hands '. 
We have seen Glanvill lay stress on the apparition 
, of a hand. In the case of the devil of Glenluce, 
' there appeared a naked hand, and an arm from the 



' StgraisinHU, p. zij. 
"Craokes's Nolcs of an Eiu 
I calUd Spiritual, p. SG. London : 



,.«, 



126 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

elbow down, beating upon the floor till the house 
did shake again '.^ At Rerrick, in 1695, 'it knocked 
upon the chests and boards, as people do at a door '. 
'And as I was at prayer,' says the Rev. Alexander 
Telfair, ' leaning on the side of a bed, I felt some- 
thing thrusting my arm up, and casting my eyes 
thitherward, perceived a little white hand, and an 
ai-m from the elbow down, but it vanished presently.' ^ 
The hands viewed, grasped, and examined by Home's 
clientele, hands which melted away in their clutch, 
are innumerable, and the phenomenon, with the 
' cold breeze,' is among the most common in modem 
narratives. 

Our only conclusion is that the psychological 
conditions which begat the ancient narratives pro- 
duce the new legends. These surprise us by the 
apparent good faith in marvel and myth of many 
otherwise credible narrators, and by the coincidence, 
accidental or designed, with old stories not generally 
familiar to the modern public. Do impostors and 
credulous persons deliberately ' get up ' the subject 
in rare old books ? Is there a method of imposture 
handed down by one generation of bad little girls to 
another ? Is there such a thing as persistent identity 
of hallucination among the sane? This was Cole- 
ridge's theory, but it is not without difficulties. 
These questions are the present results of Compara- 
tive Psychological Research. 

' Sainn's Invisibli Worlil Discovered, p. 75. 
^ANcTB Confulntlon of Saddueism, ■p. 5, wiit by Mt. Alexander 
Telfair, London, j6g6. 



127 



HAUNTED HOUSES. 

Reginald Scot on Protestant expulsion of Ghosts, His boast 
premature. Savage hauntings. Red Indian example. 
Classical cases, Petrus Thyrceus on Haunted Houses, 
His examples from patristic literature. Three species of 
haunting spirits. Demons in disguises. Hallucinations^ 
visual^ auditory, and tactile. Are the sounds in Haunted 
Houses real or hallucinatory 1 All present do not always 
hear them. Interments in houses to stop hauntings. 
Modern example. The Restoration and Scepticism, 
Exceptional position of Dr, Johnson, Frequency of 
Haunted Houses in modern Folk-lore, Researches of 
the S, P, R, Failure of the Society to see Ghosts, Un- 
certain behaviour of Ghosts. The Society need a * seer * 
or * sensitive ' comrade. The * type ' or normal kind 
of Haunted Houses, Some natural explanations. His- 
torical continuity of type. Case of Sir Walter Scott, A 
haunted curacy. Modern instances. Miss Mortons 
case : a dumb ghost. Ghost, as is believed, of a man of 
letters, Mr, Harry's ghost raises his mosquito curtains. 
Columns of light, Mr, Podmoris theory. Hallucina- 
tions begotten by natural causes are ^ telepathically^ 
transferred, with variations, to strangers alia distance. 
Example of this process. Incredulity of Mr, M^lfs, 
The spontaneous phenomena reproduced at ' stances \ A 
ghost who followed a young lady. Singular experience 
of the writer in Haunted Houses. Experience negative. 
Theory of * dreams of the dead \ Difficulties of this 



) COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

theory : physical force exerted in dreams. Theory of 
Mr. James Sully. His Jittscientific mttkod and careless- 
ness as to evidence. Reflections. 



Reginald Scot, the humane author who tried, in 
his Discovery of Witchcraft, 1584 (xv. 39), to laugh 
witch trials away, has a triuipphant passage on the 
decline of superstition, ' Where are the soules that 
swarmed in time past ? where are the spirits? who 
heareth their noises ? who seeth their visions ? ' 
He decides that the spirits who haunt places and 
houses, may have gone to Italy, because masses are 
dear in England. Scot, as an ardent Protestant, 
conceived that haunted houses were ' a lewd inven- 
tion,' encouraged, if not originated, by the priests, 
in support of the doctrine of purgatory. A,s a matter 
of fact the belief in 'haunting,' dates from times 
of savagery, when we may say that every bush has 
its bo^le. The Church had nothing to do with the 
rise of the belief, though, early in the Reformation, 
some ' psychical phenomena ' were claimed as ex- 
perimental proofs of the existence of purgatory. 
Reginald Scot decidedly made his Protestant boast 
too soon. After 300 years of ' the Trewth,' as Knox 
called it, the haunted houses are as much part of 
the popular creed as ever. Houses stand empty, 
and are said to be ' haunted '. Here not the fact 
of haunting, but only the existence of the super- 

I stition is attested. Thus a house in Berkeley Square 
was long unoccupied, for reasons perfectly common- 
place and intelligible. But the fact that it had no 

I tenants needed to be explained, and was explained 



HAUNTED HOUSES. 

by a myth,— there were ghosts in the house 1 On 
the other hand, if Reginald Scot asked to-day, ' Who 
heareth the noises, who seeth the visions?' we could 
answer, ' Protestant clergymen, officers in the army, 
ladies, land-agents, solicitors, representatives of all 
classes, except the Haunted House Committee of 
the Psychical Society ', 

Before examining the researches and the results 
of this learned hody, we may glance at some earlier 
industry of investigators. The common savage 
beliefs are too well known to need recapitulation, 
and have "been treated by Mr. Tylor in his chapter 
on 'Animism,'' and by Mr. Herbert Spencer in. 
Principles of Psychology. The points of diiTerence 
between these authors need not detain us here. . 
As a rule the spirits which haunt the bush, or the ■ 
forest, are but vaguely conceived of by the Austra- ■ 
lian blacks, or Red Men : they may be ghosts of the , 
dead, or they may be casual spirits unattached. | 
An example analogous to European superstition is 
given by John Tanner in his Narrative of a Captivity 
among the Red Indians, 1830. In this case one man 
had slain his brother, or, at least, a man of his own 
Totem, and was himself put to death by the kindred. 
The spectres of both haunted a place which the 
Indians shunned, but Tanner (whose Totem was 
the same as that of the dead) passed a night on the 
scene. His dreams, if not his waking moments, 
for bis account is indistinct, were disturbed by the 
ghosts. It is impossible to ascertain how far this 

' Primitive Culture, vol. i. 368 ; ii. 304. 
9 



I30 COCK LAKE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

particular superstition was coloured by European 
influences.' 

Over_classica] tales we need not linger. Pliny, 
Plutarch, Suetonius, St. Augustine, Lucian, Plautus 
{in the MosUllaria), describe, with more or less of 
seriousness, the apparitions and noises which 
haunted houses, public baths, and other places. 
Occasionally a slain man's phantom was anxious 
that his body should be buried, and the reported 
phenomena were akin to those in modern popular 
legends. Sometimes, in the middle ages, and later, 
the law took cognisance of haunted houses, when 
the tenant wished to break his lease. A collection 
of authorities is given elsewhere, in Ghosts be/ore the 
Law. It is to be noticed that Bouchel, in his Biblio- 
theque du Droit Fran^ais, chiefly cites classical, not 
modern, instances, 

Among the most careful and exhaustive post- 
meditcval writers on haunted houses we must cite 
Petrus Thyrsus of the Society of Jesus, Doctor in 
Theology. His work, published at Cologne in 1598, 
is a quarto of 352 pages, entitled, ' Loca Infesta ; 
That is, Concerning Places Haunted by Mischievous 
Spirits of Demons and of the Dead. Thereto is added 
a Tract on Nocturnal Disturbances, which are wont 
to bode the deaths of Men.' Thyraius begins, 
'That certain places are haunted by spectres and 
spirits, is no matter of doubt,' wherein a modern 
reader cannot confidently follow him, 

' The reader may also consult Notes an the Spirit Basis of Belief 
and Cuilom, a rough drafl printed for the Indian Government. 
While rich in curious facts, the draft contains veiy little about 
< manifestations,' except in ' poBsessioQ '. 



HAUNTED HOUSES. 



131 



When it comes to establishing his position Thy- 
rsus most provokingly says, ' we omit cases which 
are recent and of daily occurrence,' such as he heard 
narrated, during his travels, in ' a certain haunted 
castle'. A modern inquirer naturally prefers recent 
examples, which may be inquired into, but the old 
scholars reposed more confidence in what was written 
by respected authors, the more ancient the more 
authoritative. However Thyraius relies on the 
anthropological test of evidence, and thinks'that his 
belief is confirmed by the coincident reports of haunt- 
ings, ' variis distinctissimisquc locis et temporibus,' 
in the most various times and places. There is some- i 
thing to be said for this view, and the identity of the , 
alleged phenomena, in all lands and ages, does raise 
a presumption in favour of some kind of abnormal [ 
occurrences, or of a common species of hallucinations. 
Like most of the old authors Thyrseus quotes Augus- 
tine's taie of a haunted house, and an exorcism in 
De Civilate Dei (lib. xxii. ch. viii.). St. Gregory has also 
a story of one Paschasius, a deacon, who haunted 
some baths, and was seen by a bishop.^ There is 
a ghost who rode horses, and frightened the religious 
in the Life of Gregory by Joannes Diaconus {iv. 8g), 
In the Life of Theodorns one Georgius, a discipJe of 
his, mentions a house haunted by stone-throwing 
sprites, a very common phenomenon in the books of 
Glanvill, and Increase Mather, in witch trials, and in 
rural disturbances. Omitting other examples Car- 
dan* is cited for a house at Parma, in which during 



t 



132 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 



a hundred years the phantom of an old woman was 
seen before the death of members of the family. 
This is a rare case of an Italian Banshie. William 
of Paris, in Bodin (iii. ch. vi.) tells of a stone-throw- 
ing fiend, very active in 1447. The bogey of Bingen, 
a rapping ghost of S56, is duly chronicled ; he also 
threw stones. The dormitory of some nuns was ■ 
haunted by a spectre who moaned, tramped noisily 
around, dragged the sisters out of bed by the feet, ; 
and even tickled them nearly to death ! This annoy- j 
ance lasted for three years, so Wierus says.^ Wod- 
row chronicles a similar affair at Meliantrae, in Annan- 
dale. Thynteus iis-tinguishes three kind^ of hpiint.ing — 
spritejj devils, damned souls, and sp.ulsin-purgatoiju- 
SomeaxejiJiies. mild and sportive ; some_are ixucuLmii,. 

I ferociajis^^ Brownies, or fauni, may act in either 
aiaracter, as Sccutorcs d joculatorcs. They raliier_aim 

Pa'f teasing than at inflicting harm. They throw 
stones, lift beds,^nd make a hubbub and crash with 
the furniture. Suicides, murderers, .and_ .spLrit§__of 
murder ed people, are all apt to haunt houses. The 
sprites occasionally appear in their proper form, but 
just as often in disguise : a demon, too, can appear in 
human shape if so disposed : demons being of their 
nature deceitful and fond of travesty, as Porphyry 
teaches us and as Law (1680) illustrates. Whether' 
the spirits of the dead quite know what they are abjj^ut 
when they take to haunting, is, in the opinioji^^ 
Thyrasua, a difficult question. Thomas Aquinas, fol- 
lowing St. Augustine, inclines to hold that when there 
is an apparition of a dead man, the dead man is un- 
' De Praestigiis Daemon, 



HAUNTED HOUSES. I33 

conscious of the circumstance. A spirit of one kind 
or another may be acting in his semblance. ThyrEeus 
rather fancies that the dead man is aware of what is 
going on. 

Hauntings may be visual, auditory, or confined_ 
to tlie seiise~of~t6uch. Auditory effects are pro- 
duced by'flufteiTngs of air, noises are caused, steps 
are heard, laughter, and moaning. Lares domestici 
(brownies) mostly make a noise. Apparitions may be 
in ta ctile form of men or animals, or monsters. As for 
effects, some ghosts push the living and drive them 
along, as the Bride of Lammermoor, in Law's Memo- 
nails, was ' harled through the house,' by spirits. The 
spirits of an amorous complexion seem no longer to 
be numerous, but are objects of interest to Thyrsus 
as to Increase Mather, Thyrjeus now raises the diffi- 
cult question : ' Are the sounds heard in haunted 
houses real, or hallucinatory ? ' Omnis qui a spiritibus 
Jit, simulatus est, specie sui j'allit. The spirits having 
no vocal organs, can only produce noise. In a spiritual 
hurly-burly, some of the mortals present hear notliivg 
(as we shall note in some modern examples), but may 
they not be prevented from hearing by the spirits? 
Or again, the sounds may be hallucinatory and only 
some mortals may have the power of hearing them. 
If there are visual, there may also be auditory hal- 
lucinations.' On the whole Thyrsus thinks that the 
sounds may be real on some occasions, when all 
present hear them, hallucinatory on others. But the 

' Si fallen: possunt, ut quis videre se credal, cum vidcal tevtra 
extra se nihil : noii poterunt fallere, ut ciedal: qui:^ se audire sono^q, 
quos tevera non audit? (p. Si). 



134 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSl 



sounds need not be produced on the furniture, for 
example, when they seem to be so produced. ' Often 
we think that the furniture has been ail tossed about, 
when it really has not been stirred.' The classical 
instance of the disturbances which aroused Scott at 
Abbcitsford, on the death of his agent Bullock, is in 
point here. ' Often a hammer is heard rappinfj, when 
there is no hammer in the house' (p. 82). These 
are curious references to phenomena, however we 
explain them, which are still frequently reported. 

Thyrjeus thinks that the air is agitated when 
sounds are heard, but that is just the question to be 
solved. 

As for visual phantasms, these Thyrfeus regards 
as hallucinations produced by spirits on the human 
senses, not as external objective entities. He now 
asks why the sense of touch is affected usually as if 
by a cold body. Beyond assuming the influence of 
spirits over the air, and, apparently, their power of 
using dead bodies as vehicles for themselves, Thyrteus 
comes to no distinct conclusion. He endeavours, at 
great length, to distinguish between haunters who 
are ghosts of the dead, and haunters who are demons, 
or spirits unattached. The former wail and moan, 
the latter are facetious. He decides that to bury dead 
bodies below the hearth docs not prevent haunting, 
for 'the hearth has no such efficacy'. Such bodies 
are not very unfrequently found in old English 
houses, the reason for this strange interment is not 
obvious, but perhaps it is explained by the superstition 
which Thyraius mentions. One might imagine that 
to bury people up and down a house would rather 



HAUNTED HOUSES. I35 

secure haunting than prevent it. And, indeed, at 
Passenham Rectory, where the Rev. G. M. Capel! 
found seven skeletons in his dining-room, in 1874, 
Mrs. Montague Crackanthrope and her nurse were 
'obsessed' by 'a feehng that some one was in the 
room,' when some one was not-} Perhaps seven 
burials were not sufficient to prevent haunting. The 
conclusion of the work of Thyrseus is devoted to 
exorcisms, and orthodox methods of expelling spirits, 
The knockings which herald a death are attributed 
to the Lares, a kind of petty mischievous demons 
unattached. Such is the essence of the learned j 
Jesuit's work, and the strange thing is that, in an I 
age of science, people are still discussing his pro- 1 
btems, and, stranger still, that the reported pheno- f 
mena remain the same. 

That the Church in the case of Thyraeus, and 
many others ; that medical science, in the person of 
Wierus (b. 1515) ; that law, in the book of Bouchel, 
should have gravely canvassed the topic of haunted 
houses, was, of course, very natural in the dark ages 
before the restoration of the Stuarts, and the founding 
of the Royal Society. Common-sense, and 'drolling 
Sadduceeism,' came to their own, in England, with 
the king, with Charles II. After May 29, 1660, 
Webster and Wagstaffe mocked at bogles, if Gianvill 
and More took them seriously. 

Before the Restoration it was distinctly dangerous 

to laugh at witchcraft, ghosts and hauntings. But 

the laughers came in with the merry monarch, and 

less by argument than by ridicule, by inveighing 

' proceedings S, P. R., xv. 4*, 



136 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

against the horror, too, of the hideous witch prose- 
cutions, the laughers gradually brought hauntings 
and apparitions into contempt. Few educated people 
dared to admit that their philosophy might not be 
wholly exhaustive. Even ladies sneered at Dr. John- 
son because he, having no dread of common-sense be- 
fore his eyes, was inclined to hold that there might be 
some element of truth in a world-old and world-wide 
belief; and the romantic Anna Seward told, without 
accepting it, Scott's tale of 'The Tapestried chamber'. 
That a hundred years after the highday and triumph 
of common-sense, people of education should be 
found gravely investigating all that common-sense 
had exploded, is a comfortable thought to the 
believer in Progress, The world does not stand 
still. 

A hundred years after the blue stockings looked 
on Johnson as the last survivor, the last of the 
Mohicans of superstition, the Psychical Society can 
collect some 400 cases of haunted houses in England. 

Ten years ago, in 1884, the society sifted out 
nineteen stories as in 'the first class,' and based 
on good first-hand evidence. Their ap^lysis of the 
reports led them to think that there is a certain 
genuine type oi story, and, that when a tale 'differs ■ 
widely from the type, it proves to be incorrect, qr 
unattainable from an authentic source '. This is 
very much the conclusion to which the writer is 
brought by historical examination of stories about 
hauntings. With exceptions, to be indicated, these 
tales all approximate to a tyje, and that is not the ; 
type of the magazine story. 1 



HAUNTED HOUSES. I37 

It may be well, in the first place, to make some 
negative statements as to w hat_tli^ committee does 
not discover. First, it has never yet hired a haunted- 
house in which the sights and sounds continued 
during the tenancy of the curious observers.^ The 
most obvious inference is that the earlier observers 
who" saw and heard abnormal thinj^s were unscien- 
tific, convivial, nervous, hysterical, or addicted to 
practical joking. This, however, is not the only 
possible explanation. As a celebrated prophet, by 
his own avowal had been ' known to be steady for 
weeks at a time,' so, even in a regular haunted 
house, the ghost often takes a holiday. A case is 
well known to tHe writer in which a ghost began 
his manoeuvres soon after a family entered the house. 
It made loud noises, it opened doors, turning the 
handle as the lady of the house walked about, it 
pulled her hair when she was in bed, plucked her 
dress, produced lights, and finally appeared visibly, 
a hag dressed in grey, to several persons. Then as 
if sated, the ghost struck work for years, when it 
suddenly began a^ain. was as noisy as ever, and 
appeared to a person who had not seen it before, but 
who made a spirited if unsuccessful attempt to run 
it to earth. 

The truth is, tfa^at magazi ne stories a nd su per-_ 
stitious exaggerations have spoiled us for ghosts. 
When we hear of a haunted house, we imapne~" 
that the ghost is always on view, or that he has a 
benefit night, at certain ii\'ed dates, when you know 
whereftniiave'him. These conceptions are erroneous, 
' There is one possible exception Co this lule. 



130 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

and a house may be haunted, though nothing desir- 
able occurs in preseiice of iHe committee. Moreover 
the committee, as far as the writer is aware, have, 
neglected to add a seer to their numher. This 
mistalie, if it has been made, is really wanton. It 
is acknowledged that not every one has ' a nose for 
a ghost,' as a character of George Eliot's says, or 
eyes or ears for a ghost. It is thought very 
likely that, where several people see an apparition 
simultaneously, the spiritual or psychical or im- 
aginative 'impact' is addressed to one, and by him, 
or her (usually her) handed on to the rest of the 
society. Now, if the committee do not provide theiii;_ 
selves with a good 'sensitive' comrade, what can 
they expect, but what they get, that is, nothing? _ 
A witch in an old Scotch trial says, of her 'Covin,' 
or ' Circle,' ' We could do no great thing without our 
Maiden '. The committee needs a Maiden, as a Covin 
needed one, and among the visionaries of the Psychi- 
cal Society, there must be some j'oung lady who 
should be on the House Committee. Yet one writer 
in the Society's Proceedings who has a very keen scent 
for an impostor, if not for a ghost, avers that, from 
the evidence, she believes that they are examining 
facts, and not the origin of fables. 

These facts, as was said, differ from the stories in 
' Christmas numbers'. The ghost in typical reports 
seldom or never speaks. It has no message to convey, 
or, if it has a message, it does not convey it. It does 
not unfold some tragedy of the past : in fact it is very 
seldom capable of being connected with any definite 
known dead person. The figure seen sometimes 



HAUNTED HOUSES. 



139 



'varies with the seer'.' In other cases, however, 
different people attest having seen the same phantasm. 
Finally a new house seems just as likely to be 
haunted as an old house, and the committee appears 
to have no special knowledge of very ancient 
family ghosts, such as Pearlin Jean, the Luminous 
Boy of Corby, or the rather large company of-spec- 
trcs popularly supposed to make themselves at home 
at Glamis Castle. 

What then is the type, the typical haunted | 
house, from which, if narratives vary much, they are _^ 
apt to break down under cross-examination ? 

The phenomena are usually phenomena of sight, 
or sound, or'hoth. Asa rule the sounds are foot-T 
steps, rustling of dresses, knocks, raps, heavy bangs, 
noises as of dra^'ging heavy weights, and of disarrang- 
ing heavy furniture. These sometimes occur freely, 
where nobody can testify to having seen anything . 
spectral. Next we have phantasms, mostly of figures 
beheld for a mbinent with ' the tail of the eye ' or in 
going along a passage, or in entering a room where 
nobody is found, or standing beside a bed, perhaps 
in a kind of self-luminous condition. Sometimes 
these spectres are taken by visitors for real people, 
but the real people cannot be found ; sometimes 
they are at once recognised as phantasms, 
because they are semi-transparent, or look very 
malignant, or because they glide and do not walk, 
or are luminous, or for some other excellent reason. 
T he com bination, in due proportions, of pretty 
frequent inexplicable noises, with occasional aim- 
~ 'S. P, R., vili, 8l. 



140 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

less apparitions, makes up _the type of orthodox . 
modern^Tiaunted fiouac_^story.__ The difficulty of , 
getting" "evidence worth looking at (except for 
its uniformity) is obviously great. Noises may be 
naturally caused in very many ways : by winds, by , 
rats, by boughs of trees, by water pipeSj by birds. The 
writer has known a very satisfactory series of foot- 
steps in an historical Scotch house, to be dispelled 
by a modification of the water pipes. Again he has 
heard a person of distinction mimic the noises made 
by his family ghosts (which he preserved from tests 
as carefully as Don Quixote did his helmet) and the 
performance was an admirable imitation of the wind 
in a spout. There are_ noises, however, which 
cannot be thus cheaply disposed of, and among, theia- 
are thundering whacks on the walls of rooms, which- 
continue in spite of all efforts to detect imposture. 
These phenomena, says Kiesewetter, were known to 
the Acadians of old, a circumstance for which he 
quotes no authority.' 

Paracelsus calls the knocks pulsaiio mortuorum, 
in his fragment on ' Souls of the Dead,' and thinks that 
the sounds predict misfortune, a very common belief." 
Lavaterus says, that such disturbances, in unfinished 
houses are a token of good luck ! 

Again there is the noise made apparently by 
violent movement of heavy furniture, which on 
immediate examination (as in Scott's case at 
Abbotsford) is found not to have been moved. The 
writer is acquainted with a dog, a coilie, which was 
' Geschichte des Nciiereii Occnltismus, p. \^i. 
* Opera, 1605. 



HAUNTED HOUSES. 



141 



once shut up alone in a room where this disturbance 
occurred. The dog was much alarmed and howled 
fearfully, but it soon ceased to weigh on his spirits. 

When phantasms are occasionaUy seen by respect- 
able witnesses, where these noises and movements 
occur, the haunted house is of a healthy, orthodox, 
modern type. But the phenomena are nothing less 
than modern, for Mather, Sinclair, Paracelsus, 
Wierus, GlanviJl, Bovet, Baxter and other old writers 
are full of precisely these combinations of sounds 
and sights, while many cases occur in old French 
literature, old Latin literature, and among races 
of the lower barbaric and savage grades of culture. 

One or two curious circumstances have rather 
escaped the notice of philosophers though not of 
Thyrjeus. First, the loudest of the unexplained 
sounds are occasionally not audible to all, so that 
(as when the noise seems to be caused by furniture 
dragged about) we_may conjecture with Thyrseus, 
that there is no real movement of the atmosphere, 
that the" apparent crash is an auditory hallucination. 
The planks and heavy objects at Abbotsford had not 
been stirred, as the loud noises overhead indicated, 
when Scott came to examine them. 

In a dreadfully noisy curacy vouched for by ' a 
well-known Church dignitary,' who occupied the 
place, there was usually a frightful crash as of iron 
bars thrown down, at 2 a.m. on a Sunday morning. 
AH the boxes and heavy material in a locked set of 
attics, seemed to be dancing about, but were never 
found to have been stirred. Yet this clergyman 
[ discovered that ' the great Sunday crash might 



I -[2 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE, 



manifest itself to some persons in the house without 
his wife or himself being conscious of it. Knowing 
how overwhelming the sound always appeared to me 
when I did hear it, I cannot but consider this one 
of the most wonderful things in the whole business.' ^ 

In this case, in a house standing hundreds of 
yards apart from any neighbour, and occupied only 
by a parson, his wife, and one servant, these pheno- 
mena lasted for a year, with great regularity. There 
were the usual footsteps, the ordinary rappings were 
angry when laughed at, and the clergyman when he 
left at the end of a year, was as far as ever from 
having detected any cause. Indeed it is not easy to 
do so. A friend of the writer's, an accomplished 
man of law, was once actually consulted, in the 
interests of an enraged squire, as to how he could 
bring a suit against somebody for a series of these 
inexplicable disturbances. But the law contained 
no instrument for his remedy. 

From the same report of the S. P. R. we take 
another typical case. A lady, in an old house, saw, 
in 1873, a hideous hag watching her in bed; she kept 
the tale to herself, but, a fortnight later, her brother, 
a solicitor, was not a whit less alarmed by a similar 
and similarly situated phenomenon. In this house 
dresses were plucked at, heavy blows were struck, 
heavy footsteps went about, there were raps at doors, 
and nobody was ever any the wiser as to the cause. 
Here it may be observed that a ghost's power of 
making a noise, and exerting what seems to be great 
physical energy, is often in inverse ratio to his power 



HAUNTED HOUSES. 

of making himself generally visible, or, at all events, 
to his inclination so to do. Thus there is a long 
record of a haunted house, by the chief observer. 
Miss Morton, in P. S. P. R., pt. xsii. p. 311, A lady 
had died of habits too convivial, in 187S. In April, 
1882, Miss Morton's family entered, but nobody saw 
the ghost till Miss Morton viewed it in June. The 
appearance was that of a tall lady in widow's weeds, 
hiding her face with a handkerchief. From 1882 to 
1884, Miss Morton saw the spectre six times, but 
did not name it to her family, Her sister saw the 
appearance in 1882, a maid saw it in 1883, and two 
boya beheld it in the same year. Miss Morton used 
to follow the appearance downstairs and speak to it, 
but it merely gave a slight gasp, and seemed unable 
to converse. By way of testing the spectre, Miss 
Morton stretched threads at night from the railinj^ C 
of the stair to the wall, but the ghost descended . \ 
without disturbing them. Yet her footsteps sounded / 
on the stairs. This is, in fact, a crucial difficulty . 
about ghosts. They are material enough to make a 
noise as they walk, but not material enough to brush 
away a thread ! This ghost, whose visible form was 
so much en evidence, could, or did, make no noise at 
all, beyond light pushes at doors, and very light foot- 
steps. In the curacy already described, noises were 
made enough to waken a parish, but no form was 
ever seen. Briefly, for this ghost there is a cloud of 
witnesses, all solemnly signing their depositions, 
These two examples are at the opposite poles 
between which ghostly manifestations vary, in 
haunted houses. 



A brief precis of ' cases ' may show how these 
elements of noise, on one side, and apparitions, on 
the other, are commonly blended. In a detached 
villa, just outside ' the town of C.,' Mrs. W. remarks 
a figure of a tall dark-haired man peeping; round the 
corner of a folding door. She does not mention the 
circumstance. Two months later she Bees the sanie 
sorrowful face in the drawing-room. This time she 
tells her husband. Later in the same month, when 
playing cricket with her children, she sees the face 
'peeping round from the kitchen door'. Rather later 
she heard a deep voice say in a sorrowful tone. ' I 
can't find it ' ; something slaps her on the back. Her 
step-daughter, who had not heard of the phantasm, 
sees the same pale dark-moustached face, 'peeping 
round the folding doors'. She is then told Mrs, W.'s 
story. Her little brother, later, sees the figure simul- 
taneously with herself. She also hears the voice 
say, ' I can't findjt,' at the same moment as Mrs. W- 
hears it. A year later, she sees the figure at the 
porch, in a tall hat! Neither lady had enjoyed any 
other haliticination. Nothing is known of the melan- 
choly spectre, probably the ghost of a literary person, 
searching, always searching, for a manuscript poem 
by some total stranger who had worried him into his 
grave, and not left him at peace even there. This 

I is a very solemn and touching story, and appeals 
tenderly and sadly to all persons of letters who 
suffer from the unasked for manuscripts of the 

, general public. 

2. Some ladies and servants in a house in Hyde 
Park Place, see at intervals a phantom housemaid : 



HAUNTED HOUSES. 



145 



she is also seen by a Mr. Bird. There is no story 
about a housemaid, and there are no noises. This is 
not an interesting tale, 

3. A Hindoo native woman is seen to enter a 
locked bath-room, where she is not found on inquiry. 
A, woman had been murdered there some years be- 
fore. The percipient. General Sir .\rthur Becher, 
had seen other uncanny visions. A little boy, 
wakened out of sleep, said he saw an ayah. Perhaps 
he did. 

4. A Mr. Harry, in the South of Europe, saw a 
white female figure glide through his library into his 
bedroom. Later, his daughters beheld a similar 
phenomenon, Mr. Harry, a gentleman of sturdy 
common-sense, 'dared his daughters to talk of any 
such nonsense as ghosts, as they might be sure ap- 
paritions were only in the imagination of nervous 
people'. He himself saw the phantasm seven or 
eight times in his bedroom, and twice in the library. 
On one occasion it lifted up the mosquito curtains 
and stared at Mr. Harry. As in the case of meeting 
an avalanche, ' a weak-minded man would pray, sir, 
would pray ; a strong-minded man would swear, sir, 
would swear". Mr. Harry was a strong-minded man, 
and behaved 'in a concatenation accordingly,' al- 
though Petrus Thyrseus says that there is no use 
in swearing at ghosts. The phantasm seemed to 
be about thirty-five, her features were described as 
' rather handsome," and (unromantically) as ' oblong '. 
A hallucination, we need hardly say, would not raise 
the mosquito curtains, this ghost had more heart in 
it than most. 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

5. Various people see ' a column of light vaguely 
shaped like a woman,' moving ahout in a room of a 
house in Sussex. One servant, who slept in the 
room in hopes of a private view, saw ' a hall of light 
with a sort of halo round it '. Again, in a very 
pretty story, the man who looked after an orphan 
asylum saw a column of light above the bed of 
one of the children. Next morning the little boy 
declared that his mother had come to visit him, 
probably in a dream. 

On this matter of lights^ Mr. Podmore enters" 
into argument with Mr. Frederick Myers. Mr. 
Myers, on the whole, believes that the phenomena 
of haunted houses are caused by influences of some 
sort from the minds of the dead. Mr. Podmore, 
if we understand him, holds that some living 
person has had some empty hallucination, in a_ 
house, and that this is 'telepathically' handed 
on, perhaps to the next tenant, who may know 
nothing about either the person or the vision. 
Thus, a Miss Morris, much vexed by ghostly experi- 
ences, left a certain house in December, 1886. Nearly 
a year later, in November, 1887, a Mrs. G. came in. 
Mrs, G- did not know Miss Moms, nor had she heard 
of the disturbances. However sobs, and moans, and 
heavy thumps, and noises of weighty objects thrown 
about, and white faces, presently drove Mrs. G. to 
seek police protection. This only roused the ghost's 
ambition, and he ' came ' as a man with freckles, also 
he walked about, shook be^s, and exhibited lights. 
A figure in black, with a white face, now displayed 
'Proc.S.P.R.,\iii. 133. 



HAUNTED HOUSES. 147 

itself: barristers and clergymen investigated, but to 
no purpose. They saw figures, heard crashes, and 
the divine did a little Anglican exorcism. The only 
story about the house showed that a woman had 
hanged herself with a skipping rope in the ' top back 
bedroom,' in 1S79. Here ;are plenty of phenomena, 
apparitions male and female. But Miss Morris, in 
addition to hearing noises, only saw a pale woman in 
black. 

_ Mr. Podmore's theory comes in thus : ' the later 
experiences may have been started by thought trans- 
ference from Miss Morris, whose thoughts, no doubt, 
occasionally turned to the house in which she had 
suffered so much agitation and aiarm '. Moreover 
'real noises' may have ' suggested ' the visual hal- 
lucinations to Miss Morris.^ Mr. Podmore certainly 
cannot be accused of ordinary superstition. There 
is a house, and there is a tenant. She hears foot- 
steps pounding up- and down-stairs, and all through 
her room, she says nothing and gets used to it. Let 
it be granted that these noises are caused by rats. 
After conquering her dislike to the sounds, three 
weeks after her entry to the house. Miss Morris 
meets a total stranger, deadly pale, in deep black, 
who vanishes. This phantasm has gathered round 
the nucleus which the rats provided by stamping up- 
and down-stairs, and through Miss Morris's room. | 
It is natural that a person who hears rats, or wind, or 
waterpipes, and makes up her mind not to mind it, 
should then see a phantasm of a pale woman in black; 
also should hear loud knocks at the door of her 
' Proc. S. P. R., Nov., 1889, p. 169. 



148 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

chamber. Miss Morris goes away, a year later comes 
Mrs. G., and Mrs. G., her children, her servants, a 
barrister and an exorcist, are all disturbed by 

Noises. 

Knocks. 

Sobs. 

Moans. 

Thumps. 

Dragging of heavy weights. 

One dreadful white face. 

One little woman. 

Lights. 

One white skirt hanging from the ceiling. 

One footfall which played two notes on the 
piano (!). 

One figure in brown. 

One man with freckles. 

Two human faces.* 

One shadow. 

One * part of the dress of a super-material being ' 
(Barrister). 

One form (Exorcist). 

One small column of misty vapour. 

Now all this catalogue of prodigies which drove 
Mrs. G. into the cold, bleak world, was caused, ^ by 
thought transference from Miss Morris,' who had 
been absent for a year, and whose own hallucinations 
were caused by noises which may have been produced 
by rats, or what not. 

This ingenious theory is too much for Mr. Myers's 
powers of belief : * The very first effect of Miss 
Morris's ponderings was a heavy thump, followed by 



HAUNTED HOUSES. 149 

a deep, sob and moan, and a cry of, " Oh, do forgive 
me," all disturbing poor Mrs. G, who had the ill luck 
to find herself in a bedroom about which Miss Morris 
was possibly thinking. . . . Surely the peace of us 
all rests on a very uncertain tenure.' Meanwhile 
Mr. Myers prefers to regard the whole trouble as 
more probably caused by the ' dreams of the dead ' 
woman who hanged herself with a skipping rope, than 
by the reflections of Miss Morris. In any case the 
society seem to have occupied the house, and, with 
their usual bad luck, were influenced neither by the 
ponderings of Miss Morris, nor by the frcdaines of 1 
the lady of the skipping rope.^ It may he worth 
noticing that the raps, knocks, lights, and so forth 
of haunted houses, the 'spontaneous' disturbances, 1 
have been punctually produced at savage, classical, j 
and modern se'afjcss. If these, from the days of the j 
witch of Endor to our own, and from the polar regions 
to Australia, have all been impostures, at least they 
all imitate the 'spontaneous' phenomena reported to 
occur- in haunted houses. The lights are essential 
in the seances described by Porphyry, Eusebius, 
lamblichus : they were also familiar to the cove- 
nanting saints. The raps are known to Australian 
biack fellows. The phantasms of animals, as at the 
Wesleys' house, may be beasts who play a part in 
the dead man's dream, or they may be incidental 
hallucinations, begotten of rats, and handed on by 
Miss Morris or any one else. 

There remains a ghost who illustrates the story, 

' This is rather overstated ; lliurc were knocks, and raps, and 
footsteps (Proc. S. P. R., Nov., iSSg, p. 310). 



I50 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 



spread all over Ecvope, of the farmer who was 
driven from his house by a bogle. As his carts 
went along the road, the bogle was heard exclaim- 
ing, ' We're flitting to-day,' and it faithfully stayed 
with the family. This tale, current in Italy as well 
as in Northern England, might be regarded as a 
mere piece of folk-lore, if the incident had not re- 
produced itself in West Brompton, In 1870 the 
T.'s took a house here : now mark the artfulness of 
the ghost, it did nothing for eighteen months. In 
autumn, 1871, Miss T. saw a figure come out of 
the dining-room, and the figure was often seen, later, 
by nve independent witnesses. It was tail, dressed 
in grey, and was chiefly fond of haunting Miss T.'s 
own room. It did not walk, it glided, making no 
noise. Mr. T, met it in the hall, once, when he 
came in at night, and from the street he saw it 
standing in the drawing-room window. It used to 
sigh and make a noise as of steps, when it was not 
visible, it knocked and moved furniture about, and 
dropped weights, but these sounds were sometimes 
audible only to one, or a few of the observers. In 
1877 the T.'s left for another house, to which Miss 
T. did not repair tili 1879. Then the noises came 
back as badly as ever, — the bogle had flitted, — and, 
on Christmas Day, 1879, Miss T. saw her old friend 
the figure. Several members of the family never 
saw it at all. One lady, in another case. Miss Nettie 
Vatas-Simpson, tried to flap a ghost away with a 
towel,' but he was not thus to be exorcised. He 
presently went out through a locked door. 
'Proc. S. F. R., April, 1885, p. 144. 



HAUNTED HOUSES. I5I 

Such are the ordinary or typical phenomena of 
haunted houses. It is plainly of no use to take a 
haunted house for a month and then say it is not 
haunted because you see no ghosts. Even_where._ . 
they have been seen there are breaks of years with.- _ 
ont afiy""' manifestations'. Besides, the evidence 
shows that it is not every one who can see a ghost 
when he is there : Miss Morton's father could not 
see the lady in black, when she was visible to Miss 
Morton. 

It is difficult to write with perfect seriousness j 
about haunted houses. The writer will frankly ' 
confess that, when living in haunted houses (as he i 
has done at various times when suffering from 
illness and overwork), he takes a very solemn view ) 
of the matter about bed-time. If ■ expectant atten- I 
tion' on a mind strained by the schools, and a body 
enfeebled by bronchitis, could have made a man, 
who was the only occupant of the haunted wing of 
an old Scotch castle, see a ghost, the writer would 
have seen whatever there was to see. To be sure 
he could not rationally have regarded a spectre 
beheld in these conditions, as a well-authenticated 
ghost.' As far as his experience of first-hand tales is 
concerned, the persons known to him who say they 
have seen ghosts in haunted houses, were neither 
unhealthy, nor, except in one solitarj' case, imagina- 
tive, nor were they expecting a ghost. The appari- 
tion was ' a little pleasant surprise '. The usual 

' To be iiank, in a haunted house the writer did once see an 
appearance, which was certainly either the ghost or one of the 
maids ; ' the Deil or else an outler quey,' as Burns says. 



T52 COCK LANS AKD COMMON-SENSE, 

seer is not an invalid, nor a literary person who can 
always be dismissed as 'imaginative,' though he is 
generally nothing of the kind. But it cannot be denied 
that ladies either see more ghosts than men or are 
less reluctant to impart information. The visionary 
lady who keeps up a regular telepathic correspond- 
ence with several friends is likely to see a ghost, 
and should certainly be entered at ' fixed local 
ghosts,' but there are slight objections to such 
evidence, as not free from suspicion of fancifulness. 

Turning from the seers to the seen, it is difficult 
□r impossible even to suggest an hypothesis which 
will seem to combine the facts, The moat plausible 
fancy is that which likens the apparitions to figures 
in a feverish dream. Could we imagine a more or 
[less bad man or \vo"man dead, and fitfully living over 
.again, ' in that sleep of death,' old events among old 
-scenes, could we go further and believe that these 
dreams were capable of being made objective and 
visible to the living, then we might find a kind of 
theory of the process. But even if it were possible 
to demonstrate the existence of such a process, we 
are as far as ever from accounting for the force which 
causes noises, or hallucinations of noises, a force 
of considerable vigour, according to observers. Still 
less could we explain the rare cases in which a ghost 
produces a material effect on the inanimate or ani- 
mate world, as by drawing curtains, or pulling people's 
hair and clothes.^all phenomena as well vouched. — 
for as the others. A picture projected by one mind 
on another, cannot conceivably produce these effects. 
They are such as ghosts have always produced^or 



been said to produce. Since the days of ancient 
Egypt, glrosts have learned, and have forgotten 
nothing. Unless we adopt the scientific and popular 
system of merely saying ' Fudge ! ' we find no end 
to the conundrums of the ghostly world. Ghosts 
seem to know as little about themseives as we do, 
so that, if we are to discover anything, we must 
make haste, before we become ghosts ourselves. 

Writers on .Psychology .sometimes_iriake_a pjish 
at a theory o f haunted hous es^ Mr. James Sully, 
for example, has done so in his book styled Illusions.^ 
Mr, Sully appears well pleased with his hypothesis, 
and this, gi^anting the accuracy of a tale for which 
he is indebted to a gentleman who need not be 
cited here, argues an easily contented disposition. 
Here is the statement : — 

' A lady was staying at a country house. During 
the night and immediately on waking up she had 
(sic) an apparition of a strange-looking man in 
medieval costume, a figure by no means agreeable, 
and which seemed altogether unfamiliar to her. The 
next morning, on rising, she recognised the original 
of her hallucinatory image in a portrait hanging on 
the wall of her bedroom, which must have impressed 
itself on her brain before the occurrence of the ap- 
parition, though she had not attended to it. Oddly 
enough, she now learned for the first time that the 
house at which she was staying had the reputation 
of being haunted, and by the very same somewhat 
repulsive-looking medijeval personage that had 
troubled her inter-somnolent moments. The case 
' London, iiSi, pp. 184-185. 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

seems to me to be typical with respect to the genesis 
of ghosts, and of the reputation of haunted houses.' 

This anecdote affords much joy to the super- 
stitious souis who deal in Psjxhical Research, or 
Ghost Hunting. Mr. Sully's manner of narrating 
it clearly proves the difference between Science and 
Superstition. For a Ghost Hunter or Psychical 
Researcher would not venture to publish a modern 
ghost story (except for mere amusement), if he had 
it not at first hand, or at second hand with corrobora- 
tion at first hand. Science, however, can adduce 
a case without indicatins; the evidence on which it 
rests, as whether Mr, Sully's informant had the tale 
from the lady, or at third, fourth, fifth, or a hundredth 
hand. So much for the matter of evidence, Next, 
Mr. Sully does not tell us whether the lady 'had an 
apparition,' when she supposed herself to be awake, 
or asleep, or 'betwixt and between'. From the 
phrase ' inter-somnolent,' he appears to prefer the 
intermediate condition. But he does not pretend to 
have interrogated the lady, the ' percipient". Again, 
the figure wore a ' medijeval costume,' the portrait 
represented a ' mediteval personage '. Does Mr. Sully 
believe that the portrait was an original portrait of 
a real person ? and how many portraits of mediseval 
people does he suppose to exist in English country 
houses ? Taking the Middle Ages as lasting till the 
beginningofthereignof Henry VII I., say till Holbein, 
we can assure Mr. Sully that they have left us very 
few portraits indeed. But perhaps it was a modern 
picture, a fanciful study of a man in mediseval 
costume. In that event, Mr. Sully's case is greatly 



HAUNTED HOUSES. 

strengthened, but he does not tell us whether the 
work of art was, or was not, contemporary with the 
Middle Ages. Neither does he tell us whether the 
lady was in the habit of seeing hallucinations. 

The weakest point in the whole anecdote and 
theory is in the statement, 'oddly enough, she now 
learned for the first time that the house at which she 
was slaying had the reputation of being haunted' by 
the meditcvai personage. It certainly would be very 
odd if one picture in a house troubled ' the inter- 
somnolent moments ' of a succession of people, who, 
perhaps, had never seen, or, like the lady, never 
attended to it. Such 'troubles' are very rare: very 
few persons have seen a dream which, in Mr. Sully's 
words, ' left behind, for an appreciable interval after 
waking, a vivid after-impression, and in some cases, 
even the semblance of a sense perception '. Mathe- 
maticians may calculate the chances against a single 
unnoticed portrait producing this very rare effect, in 
a series of cases, so as to give rise to a belief in 
haunting, by mere casual coincidence. In the 
records of the Psychical Society, one observer speaks 
of seeing a face and figure at night, which he re- 
cognises next moming in a miniature on his chimney- 
piece. But. in this case, there was no story of haunt- 
ing, there had been no series of similar impressions 
on successive occupants of the room, that is the 
circumstance which Mr. Sully finds 'odd enough,' 
a sentiment in which we may ail agree with him. 
This is exactly the oddity which his explanation does 
not explain. 

While psychological science, in this example, 



156 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

seems to treat matters of evidence rather laxly, 
psychical conjecture, on the other hand, leaves 
much unexplained. Thus Mr ^ Myers p uts forward 
a theory which is, in origin, due to St. Augustine. 
The saint had observed that any one of us. may be 
seen in a dream by another person, whilt; our intelli- 
gence is absolutely unconscious of any cpminunica- 
tion. Apply this to ghosts in haunted houses. We 
may be affected by a hallucination of the presence 
of a dead man or woman, but he, or she (granting 
their continued existence after death), may know 
nothing of the matteiv In the same way, there are 
stories of people who have consciously tried to make 
others, at a distance, think of them. The subjects 
of these experiments have, it is said, had a hallucina- 
tion of the presence of the experimenter. But he 
is unaware of his success, and has no control over 
the actions of what old writers, and some new theo- 
sophists, call his ' astral body '. Suppose, then, that 
something conscious endures after death. Suppose 
that some one thinks he sees the dead. It does not 
follow that the surviving consciousness (ex hypoihesi) 
of the dead person who seems to be seen, is aware 
that he is 'manifesting' himself As Mr. Myers puts 
it, 'ghosts must therefore, as a rule, represent— not 
conscious or central currents of intelligence— -but - 
mere automatic projections from consciousnesses 
which., have their centres elsewhere,' arap t^pive^ 
avic evi ■Trdfiirai': as Homer makes Achilles say, 'there 
is no heart in them.' ' All this is not inconceivable. 
But all this does not explain the facts, namely, tTie 
1 S. P. R., XV. 64. ~^ 



HAUNTED HOUSES, 



157 



noises, often very loud, and the movements of objects, 
and the lis;lrt9 wiiicb ape the cbmniori or infrequent 
accompaniments of apparitions in haunted houses. 
Now we have {always on much the same level of evi- 
dence) accounts of similar noises, and movements of 
untouched objects, occurring where living persons of 
peculiar constitution are present, or in haunted 
houses. These things we discuss in an essay on 
' The Lo^ic of Table-turning '. By parity of reason- 
ing, or at least by an obvious analogy, we are led to 
infer-that more than ' an- automatic projection from 
the consciousness' of a dead man is present where 
he is not only seen, but heard, making noises, and 
perhaps moving objects. If this be admitted then 
psychical conjecture is pushed back on something 
very like the old theory of haunted houses, namely, 
that a ghost, or spiritual entity, is present and active 
there. 

Long ago. in a little tale called ' Castle Perilous ' 
(published in a volume named The Wrojig Paradise), 
the author made an affable sprite explain all these 
phenomena. ' We suffer, we ghosts,' he said in 
effect, ' from a malady akin to aphasia in the living. 
We_know what we want to say, and how we wish 
to appear, but, just as a patient in aphakia uses the \ 
wrong word, we use the wrong manifestation,' This 
he illustrated by a series of apparitions on his own 
part, which, he declared, were involuntary and un- 
conscious : when they were described to him by the 
percipient, he admitted that they were vulgar and 
distressing, though, as far as he was concerned, 
merely automatic. 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSB. 

These remarks of the f^host, were, at least, ex- 
phcit and intellij^ible. The theory which he stated 
with an honourable candour, and in language per- 
fectly lucid, appears to have been adopted bj^Mr. 
FjederJck^^Myers, but he puts it in a different style. 
' I argue that the phantasmqgenctic agency at_>VQlt 
—whatever, thaj may be^may be able to produce 
effects of light more easily than definite figures. . , . 
A similar argument will hold good in the case of the 
vague hallucinatory noises which frequently accom- 
pany definite veridical phantasms, and frequently 
also occur apart from any definite phantasm in 
houses reputed haunted.'^ Now where Mr. Myers 
says ' phantasmogenetic agency,' we say ' ghost '. 
J'appelle un chat, un chat, et Rotlet un/ripon. W^jjrge^ 
that the ghost cannot, as it were, express himself 
as plainly as he would like to do, that he suffers 
from aphasia. Now he shows as a black dog, now 
as a green lady, now as an old man, and often he 
can only rap and knock, or display a light, or tug 
the bed-clothes. Thus the Rev. F. G. Lee tells us 
that a ghost first sat on his breast invisibly, then 
glided about his room like a man in grey, and, finally, 
took to thumping on the walls, the bed and in the 
chimney. Dr. Lee kindly recited certain psalms, and 
was greeted with applause, ' a very tornado of knocks 
. . . was the distinct and intelligible response'.* 
Now, on our theory, the ghost, if he could, would 
have said, ' Thank you very much,' or the like, but 



i Proceedings S. P. K., 
' Sights and Shadows, 



HAUNTED HOUSES. 

he could not, so his sentiments translated themselves 
into thumps. On another occasion, he might have 
merely shown a light, or he might have sat on Dr. 
Lee's chest, ' pressed unduly on my chest,' says the i 
learned divine, — or pulled his blankets off, as is not I 
unusual. Such are the peculiarities of spectral i 
aphasia, or rather asemia. The ghost can make signs, I 
but not the right signs. 

Very fortunately for science, we have similar 
examples of imperfect expression in the living^ Thus 
Dr. Gibotteau, formerly interne at a hospital in 
Paris, published, in Annaies des Sciences Psychiqucs 
(Oct. and Dec, 1892), his experiments on a hospital 
nurse, and her experiments on him. She used to 
try to send him hallucinations. Once at 8 p.m. in 
summer as he stood on a balcony, he saw a curious 
rcjl^t blanc, 'a shining shadow ' like that in The 
Strange Story. It resembled the reflection of the sun 
from a window, ' but there was neither sun, nor 
moon, nor lighted lamps'. This white shadow was 
the partial failure of Berthe, the nurse, ' to show 
herself to me on the balcony'. In precisely the ( 
-same way, lights in haunted houses are partial 
failures of ghosts to appear in form. As for the 
"knocks. Dr. Binns, in his Anatomy of Sleep, mentions 
a gentleman who could push a door at a distance, — 
if he could push, he could knock. Perhaps a rather 
larger collection of such instances is desirable, still, 
these cases illustrate our theory. That theory 
certainly does drive the cold calm psychical re- 
searcher back upon the primitive explanation: 'A 



l6o COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

\ ghaist's a ghaist for a' that ! ' We rnu&t^come to 

\ this, we must relapse into. ..savage., and superstitious 

psychology, if once _we admit a * p hantasmogenetic 

agency*. But science is in quest of Truth, regard- 

leSSOf *coilsequehces. ~ 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 



I Cock Lane Ghost discrtdifed. Popular Theory of Imposture. 
Dr. Johnson. Story of the Ghost. The Deceased 
Wif^s Sister. .Beginning of the Phenomena. Death 
of Fanny. Recurrence of Phenomena. Scratchings. 
Parallel Cases. Ignorance and Malevolence of the 
Ghost. Possible Literary Sources. Investigation. Imi~ 
tative Scratchings : a Failure. Trial of the Parsonses. 
Professor Barrett's Irish parallel. Cause undetected. 
The Theories of Common-sense. The St. Maur Affair. 
The Amiens Case. The Sportive Highland Fox. The 
BrightUng Cue. 

If one phantom is more discredited than another, it 
I is the Cock Lane ghost. 

The ghost has been a proverb for impudent 
I trickery, and stern exposure, yet its history remains 
I a puzzle, and is a good, if vulgar type, of all similar 
marvels. The very people who ' exposed ' the ghost, 
were well aware that their explanation was worthless, 
and frankly admitted the fact. Yet they, no more 
than we, were prepared to believe that the pheno- 
mena were produced by the spiritual part of Miss 
Fanny L. — known after her decease, as ' Scratching 
Fanny '. We still wander in Cock Lane, with a 
sense of amused antiquarian curiosity, and the same 
feeling accompanies us in all our explorations of this 
branch of mythology. It may be easy for some people 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

of common-sense to believe that all London was 
turned upside down, that Walpole, the Duke of York, 
Lady Mary Coke, and two other ladies were dmwn 
to Cock Lane (five in a hackney coach), that Dr. 
Johnson gave up his leisure and incurred ridicule, 
merely because a naughty child was scratching on a 
little wooden board. 

The matter cannot have been so simple as that, 
but from the true solution of the problem we are 
as remote as ever. We can, indeed, study even 
the Cock Lane Ghost in the light of the Com- 
parative, or Anthropological Method. We can ascer- 
tain that the occurrences which puzzled London 
in 1762, were puzzling; heathen philosophers and 
Fathers of the Church 1400 years earlier. We can 
trace a chain of 'Scratching Fannies' through the 
ages, and among races in every grade of civilisation. 
And then the veil drops, or we run our heads against 
a blank wall in a dark alley. Chaldeans, Egyptians, 
Greeks, Eskimo, Red Men, Dyaks, Fellows of the 
Royal Society, Inquisitors, Saints, have perlustrated 
Cock Lane, and have come away nothing the wiser. 
Some, of course, have thought they had the secret, 
have recognised the work of God, 'dfemons,' 'spirits,' 
' ghosts,' ' devils,' ' fairies ' and of ordinary impostors : 
others have made a push at a theory of disengaged 
nervous force, or animal magnetism. We prefer to 
leave theory alone, not even accepting with enthusi- 
asm, the hypothesis of Dr. Johnson. ' He expressed 
great indignation at the imposture of the Cock Lane 
ghost, and related, with much satisfaction, how he 
had assisted in detecting the cheat, and had published 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE, 163 

an account of it in the newspapers. Upon this 
subject I incautiously offended him, by pressing him 
with too many questions,' says Boswell, — questions 
which the good doctor was obviously unable to 
answer. 

It is in January, 1762, that the London news- 
papers begin to be full of a popular mystery, the 
Cock Lane ghost. Reports, articles, letters, appeared, 
and the gliost made what is now called a 'sensation'. 
Perhaps, the most clear, if the most prejudiced 
account, is that given in a pamphlet entitled The 
Mystery Revealed, published by Bristow, in St, Paul's 
Churchyard (1762), Comparing this treatise (which 
Goldsmith is said to have written for three guineas) 
with the newspapers. The Gentleman's Magazine and 
the Annual Register, we get a more or less distinct 
view of the subject. But the various newspapers re- 
peat each other's versions, with slight alterations; 
The Gentleman's Magazine, and Annual Register, follow 
suit, the narratives are 'synoptic,' while Goldsmith's 
tract, if it be Goldsmith's, is obviously written in 
defence of the unlucky Mr. K,, falsely accused of 
murder by the ghost. 

Mr. K.'s version is the version given by Gold- 
smith, and thus leads up to the 'phenomena' 
through a romance of middle-class life. In 1756, 
this Mr. K., a person of some means, married Miss 
E. L. of L. in Norfolk. In eleven months the 
young wife died, in childbed, and her sister. Miss 
Fanny, came to keep house for Mr. K. The usual 
passionate desire to marry his deceased wife's 
sister assailed Mr. K., and Fanny shared his 



164 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

flame. According; to Goldsmith, the canon law 
would have permitted the nuptials, if the wife had 
not bom a child which lived, though only for a few 
minutes. However this may be, Mr, K. l:onourab]y 
fled from Fanny, who, unhappily, pursued him with 
letters, and followed him to town. Here they took 
lodgings together, but when Mr. K. left the rooms, 
being unable to recover some money which he had 
lent his landlord, the pair looked out for new apart- 
ments. These they found in Cock Lane, in the 
house of Mr, Parsons, clerk of St. Sepulchre's. 

It chanced (here we turn to the /l»«Maiffir^isfcffor 
1762) that Mr. K. left Fanny alone in Cock Lane while 
I he went to a wedding in the country. She asked little 
I Elizabeth Parsons, her landlord's daughter, to share 
her b3d, and both of them were disturbed by strange 
scratchings and tappings. These were attributed 
by Mrs. Parsons to the industry of a neighbouring 
cobbler, but when they occurred on a Sundiiy, this 
I theory was abandoned. Poor Fanny, according to 
' the newspapers, thoiight the noises were a warning 
of her own death. Others, after the event, imagined 
that they were caused by the jealous or admonishing 
spirit of her dead sister. Fanny and Mr, K. (having 
sued Mr. Parsons for money lent) left his rooms in 
dudgeon, and went to Bartlet Court, Clerkenwelt, 
Here Fanny died on February 2, 1760, of a disease 
which her physician and apothecary certified to be 
small-pox, and her coffin was laid in the vault of 
St. John's Church. Now the noises in Cock Lane 
had ceased for a year and a half after Fanny left 
the house, but they returned in force in 1761-62. 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

Mr. Parsons in vain took down the wainscotting, to 
see whether some mischievous neighbour produced 
the sounds.' The raps and scratches seemed to come 
on the bed of httle EUzabeth Parsons, just as in 
the case of the Tedworth drummer, investigated by 
Glanvill, a hundred years earlier; and in the case at 
Orleans, 250 years earlier. The Orleans case is 
published, with full iegal documents, from MS. 40, 
7170, 4, Bibliotheque du Roi, in Recucii Ue Disserta- 
tions Anciennes et Nouvclies sur Us Apparitions, ii. go 
(a Avignon, 1751). "'Scratching 'was usually the first \ 
manifestation in this affair, and the scratches were 
heard in the bedroom occupied by certain children. 
The Cock Lane child 'was always affected with *^ 
tremblings and shiverings at the coming and going of -'' 
the ghost'. It was stated that the child had seen a) 
shrouded figure without hands; two other witnesses 
(one of them a publican) had seen a luminous appari- 
tion, with hands. This brilliant being lit up the figures 
on the dial of a clock. 'The noises followed the 
child to other houses,' and multitudes of people, 
clergy, nobles, and princes, also followed the child. 
A certain Mr. Brown was an early investigator, 
and published his report. Like Adriende Montalem- 
bert, in 1526, like the Franciscans about 1530, he 
asked the ghost to reply, affirmatively or negatively, 
to questions, by one knock for 'yes,' two for 'no'. 
This method was suggested, it seems, by a certain 
Maty Frazer, in attendance on the child. Thus it 
was elicited that Fanny had been poisoned by Mr. 
K. with 'red arsenic,' in a draught of purl to which 
' British Clironide, Janusuy i8, 1762. 



i66 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 



she was partial. She added that she wished to see Mr. 
K. hanged. 

She would answer other questions, now right, 
and now wrong. She called her father John, while 
his real name was Thomas. In fact she was 
what Porphyry, the Neoplatonist, would have 
called a 'deceitful demon'. Her chief effects were 
raps, scratchings, and a sound as of whirring 
wings, which filled the room. This phenomenon 
occurs in a 'haunted house' mentioned in the 
journal of the Psychical Society, It is infinitely 
more curious to note that, when Mr. Im Thum, 
in British Guiana, submitted to the doctoring of a 
playman, or native sorcerer, he heard a sound, ' at 
first low and indistinct, and then gathering in volume 
as if some big winged thing came from far toward 
the house, passed through the roof, and then settled 
heavily on the floor, and again, after an interval, as 
if the same winged thing rose and passed away as it 
had come '. Mr. Im Thum thinks the impression 
was caused hy the waving of houghs, (These Cock 
Lane occurrences were attributed to ventriloquism, 
hut, after a surgeon had held his hand on the child's 
stomach and chest while the noises were being 
produced, this probable explanation was abandoned. 
' The girl was said to be constantly attended by the 
usual noises, though bound and muffled hand and 
foot, and that without any motion of her lips, and 
when she appeared to be asleep.'' This binding is 
practised by Eskimo Angakut, or sorcerers, as of 
old, by mediums (So^et?) in ancient Greece and 
MiiHMQi Register. 



'J 



Egypt, so we gather from lamblichus, and some lines 
quoted from Porphyry by Eusebius.' A kind of 
' cabinet,' as modern spiritualists call a curtain, seems 
to have been used. In fact the phenomena, lumin- 
ous apparition, 'tumultuous sounds,' and all, were 
familiar to the ancients. Nobody seems to have 
noted this, but one unusually sensible correspondent 
of a newspaper quoted cases of knockings from 
Baxter's Certainty of the Worlds of Spirits, and thought 
that Baxter's popular book might have suggested 
the imposture. Though the educated classes had 
buried superstition, it lived, of course, among the 
people, who probably thumbed Baxter and Glanvill. 
Thus things went on, crowds gathering to amuse 
themselves with the ghost. On February i, Mr. Aid- 
rich, a clergyman of Clerkenwell, assembled in his 
house a number of gentlemen and ladies, having 
persuaded Parsons to let his child be carried thither 
and tested. Dr. Johnson was there, and Dr. Macau- 
lay suggested the admission of a Mrs. Oakes. Dr. 
Johnson supplied the newspapers with an account 
of what happened. The child was put to bed by 
several ladies, about ten o'clock, and the company 
sat 'for rather more than an hour,' during which 
nothing occurred. The men then went down-stairs 
and talked to Parsons, when they were interrupted 
by some of the ladies, who said that scratching and 
knocking had set in. The company returned, and 
made the child hold her hands outside the bed- 
clothes. No phenomena followed. Now the sprite 
had promised to rap on its own coffin in the vault of 

' Praef. Esaiig,, v. ix. 4. 



I 



i68 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 



St. John's, so thither they adjourned (without the 
medium), but there was never a scratch I "It is 
therefore the opinion of the whole assembly, that 
the child has some art of making or counterfeiting 
particular noises, and that there is no agency of any 
higher cause.' 

In precisely the same way the judges in the 
Franciscan case of 1533, visited the bed of the 
child where the spirit had been used to scratch 
and rap, heard nothing, and decided that the affair 
was a hoax. The nature of the fraud was not dis- 
covered, but the Franciscans were severely punished. 
At Lyons, the bishop and some other clerics could 
get no response from the rapping spirit which was so 
familiar with the king's chaplain, Adrien de Monta- 
lembert (1526-7). Thus ' the ghost in some measure 
remains undetected,' says Goldsmith, and, indeed, 
Walpole visited Cock Lane, but could not get in, 
apparently after the detection. But, writing on 
February 2, he may speak of an earlier date. 

Meanwhile matters were very uncomfortable for 
Mr. K. Accused by a ghost, he had no legal remedy. 
Goldsmith, like most writers, assumes that Parsons 
undertook the imposture, in revenge for having been 
sued for money lent by Mr. K. He adds that Mr. 
K. was engaged in a Chancery suit by his rela- 
tions, and seems to suspect their agency. Mean- 
while, Elizabeth was being ' tested ' in various ways. 
Finally the unlucky child was swung up in a kind 
of hammock, ' her hands and feet extended wide,' 
and, for two nights, no noises were heard. Next day 
she was told that, if there were no noises, she and 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

her father would be committed to Newgate. She 
accordingly concealed a little board, on which a. 
kettle usually stood, a piece of wood six inches by 
four. She managed this with so little art that the 
maids saw her place the wood in her dress, and 
informed the investigators of the circumstances. 
Scratches were now produced, but the child herself 
said that they were not like the former sounds, and 
' the concurrent opinion of the whole assembly was 
that the child had been frightened by threats into 
this attempt. . . . The master of the house and 
his friend both declared that the noises the girl had 
made this morning had not Ihe least likeness to the 
former noises.' In the same way the Wesleys at 
Epworth, in 1716, found that they could not imitate 
the perplexing sounds produced in the parsonage. 
The end of the affair was that Parsons, Mary 
Frazer, a clergyman, a tradesman, and others were 
tried at the Guildhall and convicted of a conspir- 
acy, on July 10, 1762. Parsons was pilloried, and 
'a handsome collection' was made for him by 
the spectators. His later fortunes, or misfortunes, 
and those of the miserable little Elizabeth, are un- 
known. One thing is certain, the noises did not 
begin in an attempt at imposture on Pareons's part ; 
he was on good terms with his lodgers, when Fanny 
was first disturbed. Again, the child could not 
counterfeit the sounds successfully when she was 
driven by threats to make the effoit. The seance of 
rather more than an hour, in which Johnson took 
part, was certainly inadequate. The phenomena 
were such as had been familiar to law and divinity. 



170 COCR LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

at least since 856, a.d.' The agencies always 
made accusations, usually false. The knocking 
spirit at Kembden, near Bingen, in 856 charged a 
priest with a scandalous intrigue. The raps on the 
bed of the children examined by the Franciscans, 
about 1530, assailed the reputation of a dead 
lady. When the Foxes, at Rochester, in 1848-49, 
set up alphabetic communication with the knocks, 
they told a silly tale of a murder. The Cock Lane 
ghost lied in the same way. The Fox girls started 
modern spiritualism on its wild and mischievous 
career, as Elizabeth Parsons might have done, in a 
more favourable environment. There was never 
anything new in all these cases. The lowest savages 
have their seances, levitations, bindings of the medium, 
trance-speakers; Peruvians, Indians, have their ob-. 
jects moved without contact. Simon Magus, or St, 
Paul under that offensive pseudonym, was said to 
make the furniture move at will.^ ' 

There is a curious recent Cock Lane case in 
Ireland where' ' the ghost ' brought no accusations 
against anybody. The affair was investigated by 
Mr. Barrett, a Professor in the Royal College of 
Science, Dublin, who published the results in the 
■ Dublin University Magazhu, for December, 1877. 
The scene was a small lonely farm house at Derry- 
gonnelly, near Enniskillen. The farmer's wife had 
died a few weeks before Easter, 1877, leaving him 

' Rudolfi Fuldensis, Aniial.. 858, in Pectz, i. 372. See Grimm's 
Teutonic Mythology, Engl, tratisl., p, 514. 

° Pseudo- Clemens, Hoiail., ii. 32, 63S. In Mi. Myers's Classical 
Essays, p. 65. 



COCK LANE AND 

with four girls, and one boy, of various ages, the 
eldest, Maggie, being twenty. The noises were 
chiefly heard in her neighbourhood. When the 
children had been put to bed, Maggie lay down, with- 
out undressing, in the bedroom off the kitchen. A soft 
pattering noise was soon heard, then raps, from all 
parts of the room, then scratchings, as in Cock Lane. 
When Mr. Barrett, his friend, and the farmer entered 
with a candle, the sounds ceased, but began again 
' as if growing accustomed to the presence of the 
Hght '. The hands and feet of the young people 
were watched, but nothing was detected, while the 
raps were going on everywhere around, on the chairs, 
on the quilt, and on the big four-post wooden bed- 
steads where they were lying. Mr. Barrett now 
played Moro with the raps, that is, he extended so 
many fingers, keeping his hand in the pocket of a 
loose great-coat, and the sounds always responded 
the right number. Four trials were made. Then 
came a noise like the beating of a dnim, 'with violent 
scratching and tearing sounds '. 

The trouble began three weeks after the wife's 
death. Once a number of small stones were found on 
Maggie's bed. All the family suffered from sleepless- 
ness, and their candles, even when concealed, were 
constantly stolen. ' It took a boot from a locked 
drawer,' and the boot was found in a great chest of 
feathers in a loft. A Bible was spirited about, and a 
Methodist teacher (the family were Methodists) made 
no impression on the agency. Tiiey tried to get some 
communication by an alphabet, but, said the farmer, 
' it tells lies as often as truth, and ofteoer, I think '. 



172 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

Mr. BaiTclt, and a friend, on two occasions, coutd 
detect no method of imposture, and, as the farmer did 
not believe that his children, sorely distressed by the 
loss of their mother, would play such tricks, at such 
a time, even if they could, the mystery remains un- 
solved. The family found that the less attention they 
paid to the disturbances, the less they were vexed. 
Mr. Barrett, examining some other cases, found that 
Dr. Carpenter's and other theories did not account for 
them. But it is certain that the children, as Metho- 
dists, had read Wesley's account of the spirit at 
Epworth, in 1716. Mr. Barrett was aware of this 
circumstance, hut was unable to discover how the 
thing was managed, on the hypothesis of fraudulent 
imitation. The Irish household seems to have 
reaped no profit by the affair, but rather trouble, 
annoyance, and the expense of hospitality to strange 
visitors. 

The agency was mendacious, as usual, for 
Porphyiy complains that the 'spirits' were always 
as deceitful as the Cock Lane ghost, feigning to be 
gods, heroes, or the souls of the dead. It is veiy 
interesting to note how, in Greece, as Christianity 
waxed, and paganism waned, such inquiring minds 
as that of Porphyry fell back on seances a.nd spiritual- 
ism, or superstitions unmentioned by Homer, and 
almost unheard of in the later classical literature. 
Religion, which began in Shamanism, in the 
trances of Angakut and Birraark, returned to these 
again, and everywhere found maiTel. mystery, im- 
posture, conscious, or unconscious. The phenomena 
have never ceased, imposture has always been 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

detected or asserted, but that hypothesis rarely 
covers the whole field, and so, if we walk in Cock 
Lane at all, we wander darkling, in good and bad 
company, among diviners, philosophers, saints, 
witches, charlatans, hypnotists. Many a heart has 
been broken, like that of Mr. Dale Owen, by the 
late discovery of life-long delusion, for we meet in 
Cock Lane, as Porphyry says, '^kvoi aTaTt]\rjs i^vfj-eits 
■jriiVTofiOfKJiov fot TToXuTpoTTOf. Yct this ' deceptive 
race ' has had its stroke in the making of creeds, and 
has played its part in human history, while it con- 
tributes not a little to human amusement. Mean- 
while, of all wanderers in Cock Lane, none is more 
beguiled than sturdy Common-sense, if an explanation 
is to be provided. When once we ask for more than 
' all stuff and nonsense,' we speedily receive a very 
mixed theory in which rats, indigestion, dreams, 
and of late, hypnotism, are mingled much at random, 
for Common-sense shows more valour than discretion, 
when she pronounces on matters (or spirits) which 
she has never studied. 

Beautiful instances of common-sense explanations, 
occur in two stories of the last century, the St. Maur 
affair (1706), and the haunted house of Amiens, 
(1746). The author of ' Ce qu'on doit penser de 
I'aventure arrivfe a Saint Maur," was M, Poupart, 
canon of St. Maur, near Paris. The good canon, 
of course, admits Biblical apparitions, which are 
miraculous, and admits hallucination caused by 
the state of the visual organs and by fever, while he 
believes in something like the Lucretian idea, that 
bodies, dead bodies, at least, shell off a kind of peel, 



174 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

which may. on occasion, be visible. Common ghosts 
he dismisses on grounds of common-sense ; if spirits 
in Purgatory could appear, they would appear more 
frequently, and would not draw the curtains of beds, 
drag at coverlets, turn tables upside down, and 
make terrible noises, all of which feats are traditional 
among ghosts. 

M. Poupart then comes to the adventure at 
St. Maur. The percipient, M. de S., was a man 
of twenty-five, : his mother seems to have been a 
visionary, and his constitution is described as 
'melancholic'. He was living alone, however, 
and his mother has no part in the business. The 
trouble bciijan with loud knocks at his door, and the 
sei^vant, when she went to open it, found nobody 
there. The curtains of his bed were drawn, when 
he was alone in the room, and here, of course, we 
have only his evidence. One evening about eleven, 
he and his servants heard the papers on a table 
being turned over, and. though they suspected the 
cat, no cat could be found. When S. went to bed, 
the same noise persisted in his sitting-room, where 
the cat, no doubt, could easily conceal herself, for it 
is not easy to find a cat who has motives for not 
being found. S. again hunted for the animal, but 
only heard a great rap on the wall. No sooner had 
S. gone back to bed, than the bed gave a violent 
leap, and dashed itself against the wall : the jump 
covered four feet. He called his servants, who re- 
placed the bed, but the curtains, in their sight, were 
drawn, and the bed made a wild rush at the fireplace. 
This happened again twice, though the servants held 



J 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SEKSE. 



175 



on gallantly to the bed. Monsieur S. had no sleep, 
his bed continued to bound and run, and he sent on 
the following day, for a friend. In that gentleman's 
presence the leaps made by the bed ended in its 
breaking its left foot, on which the visitor observed 
that he had seen quite enough. He is said, later, 
to have expressed sorrow that he spoke, but he may 
have had various motives for this repentance. 

On the following night, S. slept well, and if his 
bed did rise and fall gently, the movement rather 
cradled him to repose. In the afternoon, the bolts 
of his parlour door closed of their own accord, and 
the door of a large armoire opened. A voice then 
bade S. do certain things, which he was to keep 
secret, go to a certain place, and find people who 
would give him further orders. S. then fainted, hurt 
himself, and with difficulty unbolted his door. A fort- 
night later, S., his mother, and a friend heard more 
rapping, and a heavy knock on the windows. 

M. Poupart now gives the explanations of com- 
mon-sense. The early noises might have had physical 
causes : master, servants, and neighbours all heard 
them, but that proves nothing. As to the papers, 
a wind, or a mouse may have interfered with Ihem. 
The movements of the bed are more serious, as 
there are several witnesses. But ' suppose the bed 
was on castors ', The inquirer does not ask whether 
it really was on castors, or not, he supposes the 
case. Then suppose S., that melancholy man, wants 
a lark (a envie de sc rejoutr), he therefore tosses about 
in bed, and the bed rushes, consequently, round the 
room. This experiment may be attempted by any 



17& COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

philosopher. Let him lie in a bed with castors, and 
try how far he can make it run, while he kicks about 
in it. This explanation, dear to common-sense, is 
based on a physical impossibility, as any one may 
ascertain for himself. Then the servants tried in 
vain to hold back the excited couch, well, these 
servants may have lied, and. at most, could not ex- 
amine ' les ressorts secrets qui causaient ce mouve- 
ment'. Now, M. Poupart deserts the theory that 
we can make a bed run about, byiying kicking on it, 
and he falls back on hidden machinery. The in- 
dependent witness is said to have said that he was 
sorry he spoke, but this evidence proves nothing. 
What happened in the room when the door was 
bolted, is not evidence, of course, and we may 
imagine that S. himself made the noises on walls 
and windows, when his friend and mother were 
present. Thus M. S. was both melancholy, and 
anxious se donncr tin divcrHsssmcnt, by frightening 
his servants, to which end he supplied his bed with 
machinery that made it jump, and drew the curtains. 
What kind of secret springs would perform these 
feats, M. Poupart does not explain. It would have 
been wiser in him to say that he did not believe a 
word of it, than to give such silly reasons for a 
disbelief that made no exact inquiry into the circum- 
stances. The frivolities of the bed are reported 
in the case of Home and others, nor can we do 
much more than remark the conservatism of the 
phenomena ; the knocks, and the animated furniture. 
The Amiens case (1746) is reported and attested 
by Father Charles Louis Richard, Professor in 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. I77 

Theology, a Dominican friar. The haunted house 
, was in the Rue de I'Aventure, parish of St. Jacques. 
The tenant was a M. Leleu, aged thirty-six. The 
troubles had lasted for fourteen years, and there was 
evidence for their occurrence earHer, before Leleu 
occupied the house. The disturbances were of the 
usual kind, a sound of heavy planks being tossed 
about, as in the experience of Scott at Abbotsford, 
raps, the fastening of doors so that they could not 
be opened for long, and then suddenly gave way 
(this, also, is frequent in modem tales), a sound of 
sweeping the floor, as in the Epworth case, in the 
Wesleys' parsonage, heavy knocks and thumps, the 
dragging of heavy bodies, steps on the stairs, lights, 
the dancing of all the furniture in the room of Mile. 
Marie de L^tre, rattling of crockery, a noise of whir- 
' ring in the air, a jingling as of coins (familiar at 
' Epworth), and, briefly, all the usually reported tinta- 
marre. Twenty persons, priests, women, girls, men of 
all sorts, attest those phenomena which are simply 
the ordinary occurrences still alleged to be preva- 
lent. 
I The narrator believes in diabolical agency, but 
he gives the explanations of common-sense, i. M. 
Leleu is a visionary. But, as no one says that all 
the other witnesses are visionaries, this helps us 
little, 2, M. Leleu makes all the noise himself. 
That is, he climbs to the roof with a heavy sack of 
grain on his shoulder, and lets it fall ; he runs up 
and down the chimneys with his heavy sack on his 
shoulder, he frolics with weighty planks all over the 
house, thumps the walls, makes furniture dance, and 



178 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

how ? What is his motive ? His tenant^ leave 
him, he is called a fool, a devil, a possessed person : 
his business is threatened, they talk of putting him 
in jail, and that is all he has got by his partiality 
for making a racket. 3. The neighbours make the 
noises, and again the narrator asks ' how ? ' and 
'why?' 4. Some priests slept in the house once 
and heard nothing. But nobody pretends that 
there is always something to hear. The Bishop of 
Amiens licenses the publication ' with the more 
confidence, as we have ourselves received the deposi- 
tions often witnesses, a number more than sufficient 
to attest a fact which nobody has any interest in 
feigning '. 

In a tale like this, which is only one out of a 
vast number, exactly analogous, Common-sense is 
ill-advised in simply alleging imposture, so long 
maintained, so motiveless, and, on the whole, so 
very difficult to execute. M. Leleu brought in the 
Church, with its exorcisms, but our Dominican 
authority does not say whether or not the noises 
ceased after the rites had been performed. Dufres- 
noy, in whose Dissertations^ these documents are re- 
published, mentions that Bouchel, in his Bibliothequc 
dii Droit Francois, d. v. ' Louage,' treats of the legal 
aspect of haunted houses. Thus the profession has 
not wholly disdained the inquiry. 

Of all common sensible e.xplanations, the most 

sporting and good-humoured is that given by the 

step-daughter of Alexander Dingwall, a tenant in 

Inverinsh, in 1761. Poor Dingwall in his cornyard 

'Avignon, 1751. 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 179 

* heard very grievous lamentations, which continued, 
as he imagined, all the way to the seashore '. These 
he regarded as a warning of his end, but his step- 
daughter sensibly suggested that, as the morning 
was cold, * the voice must be that of a fox, to cause 
dogs run after him to give him heat *. Dingwall 
took to bed and died, but the suggestion that the 
fox not only likes being hunted, but provokes it as 
a form of healthy exercise, is invaluable. The tale 
is in Theophilus Insulanus, on the second sight. 

There is no conclusion to be drawn from this 
mass of Cock Lane stories. Occasionally an im- 
postor is caught, as at Brightling, in 1659. Mr. 
Joseph Bennet, a minister in that town, wrote an 
account of the affair, published in Increase Mather's 
Remarkable Providences. * Several things were thrown 
by an invisible hand,* including crabs ! * Yet there 
was a seeming blur cast, though not on the whole, 
yet upon some part of it, for their servant girl was at 
last found throwing some things.' She averred that 
an old woman had bidden her do so, saying that 

* her master and dame were bewitched, and that 
they should hear a great fluttering about their house 
for the space of two days '. This Cock Lane pheno- 
menon, however, is not reported to have occurred. 
The most credulous will admit that the maid is 
enough to account for the Brightling manifestations ; 
some of the others are more puzzling and remain 
in the region of the unexplained. 



APPARITIONS, GHOSTS, AND HALLUCI- 
NATIONS. 



Apparitions appear. Apparitions are not necessarily Ghosts. 
Superstition, Common-seHse, and Science. Hallucina- 
tions : their kinds, and causes. Aristotle. Mr. Gumey's 
definition. Various sources of Hallucination, external 
and internal. The Organ of Sense. The Sensory 
Centre. The Higher Tracts of the Brain. Nature of 
Mvidence. Dr. Hibbert. Claverhouse. Lady Lee. Dr. 
Donne. Dr. Hibbirt's complaint of want of evidence. 
His neglect of contemporary cases. Criticism of his 
tales. The question of coincidental Hallucinations. 
The Calculus of Probabilities ; M. Richel, MM. Binet 
et I^&re ; their Conclusions. A step beyond Hibbert. 
Examples of empty and unexciting Wraiths. Our 
ignorance of causes of Solitary Hallucinations. Th^ 
theory of ^Telepathy'. Savage metaphysics of M. 
d'Assier. Breakdown of theory of Telepathy, when 
hallucinatory figure causes changes in physical objects. 
Animals as Ghost-seers: difficult to explain this by 
Telepathy. Strange ease of a cat. General propriety 
and lack of superstition in cats. The Beresford Ghost, 
well-meaning but probably mythical. Mrs. Henry Sidg- 
witk : her severity as regards conscientious Ghosts. Case 
of Mr. Harry. Case of Miss Morton. A difficult 
case. Examples in favour of oldfashioned theory of 
Ghosts. Contradictory cases. Perplexities of the 
anxious inquirer. 

Only one thing is certain about apparitions, namely 



i 



APPARITIONS, 

this, that they do appear. They really are perceived. 
Now. as popular language confuses apparitions 
with ghosts, this statement sounds like an expression 
of the helief that ghosts appear. It has, of course, 
no such meaning. When Le Loyer, in 1586, holdly 
set out to found a ' science of spectres,' he carefully 
distinguished between his method, and the want of 
method observable in the telling of ghost stones. 
He began by drawing up long lists of apparitions 
which are not spectres, or ghosts, but the results of 
madness, malady, drink, fanaticism, illusions and so 
forth. It is true that Le Loyer, with all his deduc- 
tions, left plenty of genuine spectres for the amuse- 
ment of his readers. Like him we must be careful 
not to confound ' apparitions,' with ' ghosts '. 

When a fist, applied to the eye, makes ua ' see 
stars '; when a liver not in good working order makes 
us see miKccs volUantes, or ' spiders ' ; when alcohol 
produces ' the horrors,' — visions of threatening persons 
or animals, — when a lesion of the brain, or delirium, 
or a disease of the organs of sense causes visions, 
or when they occur to starved and enthusiastic as- 
cetics, all these false perceptions are just as much 
'apparitions,' as the view of a friend at a distance, 
beheld at the moment of his death, or as the un- 
recognised spectre seen in a haunted house. , 

In popular phrase, however, the two iast kinds 
of apparitions are called ' ghosts,' or ' wraiths," and the 
popular tendency is to think of these, and of these 
alone, when 'apparitions' are mentioned. On the 
other hand the tendency of common-sense is to rank 
the two last sorts of apparition, the wraith and ghost, 



l82 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 



with all the other kinds, which are undeniably caused 
by accident, by malady, mental or bodily, or by 
mere confusion and misapprehension, as when one, 
seeing a post in the moonlight, takes it for a ghost. 
Science, following a third path, would class all per- 
ceptions which 'have not the basis in fact that they 
seem to have' as 'hallucinations'. The stars seen 
after a blow on the eye are hallucinations, — there 
are no real stars in view, — and the friend, whose 
body seems to fill space before our sight, when his 
body is really on a death-bed far away ; — and again, 
the appearance of the living friend whom we see in 
the drawing-room while he is really in the smoking- 
room or in Timbuctoo, — are hallucinations also. The 
common-sense of the matter is stated by Aristotle. 
' The reason of the halkicinations is that appearances 
present themselves, not onlj' when the object of sense 
is itself in motion, but also when the sense is stirred, 
as it would be by the presence of the object ' [Dc 
Insomn., ii. 460, b, 23-26). 

The ghost in a haunted house is taken for a 
figure, say, of a monk, or of a monthly nurse, or 
what not, but no monthly nurse or monk is in the 
establishment. The ' percept,' is a ' percept,' for 
those who perceive it ; the apparition is an apparition, 
for them, but the perception is hallucinatory. 

So far, everybody is agreed : the differences begin 
when we ask what causes hallucinations, and what 
different classes of hallucinations exist ? Taking the 
second question first, we find hallucinations divided 
into those which the percipient (or percipients) be- 
lieves, at the moment, and perhaps later, to be real; 



APPARITIONS, GHOSTS, AND HALLUCINATIONS. 183 

and those which his judgment pronounces to be 1 
false. Famous cases of the latter class are the idola I 
which beset Nicolai, who studied them, and wrote | 
an account of them. After a period of trouble and ' 
trial, and neglect of blood-letting, Nicolai saw, first 
a dead man whom he had known, and, later, crowds I 
of people, dead, living, known or unknown. The ' 
malady yielded to leeches.' Examples of the first 
sort of apparitions taken by the judgment to be real, 
are common in madness, in the intemperate, and in 
ghost stories. The maniac believes in his visionary 
attendant or enemy, the drunkard in his rats and 
snakes, the ghost-seer often supposes that he has 
actually seen an acquaintance (where no mistaken 
identity is possible) and only learns later that the 
person,— dead, or alive and well, — was at a distance. 
Thus the writer is acquainted with the story of a 
gentleman who, when at work in his study at a 
distance from England, saw a colleague in his 
profession enter the room. 'Just wait till I finish 
this business,' he said, but when he had hastily 
concluded his letter, or whatever he was en- 
gaged on, bis friend had disappeared. That was 
the day of his friend's death, in England. Here 
then the hallucination was taken for a reality ; 
indeed, there was nothing to suggest that it was , 
anything else. Mr. Gurney has defined a hallucina- 
tion as ' a percept which lacks, but which can only by ' 
distinct reflection be recognised as lacking, the 
objective basis which it suggests ' — and by ' objective 
'Comparelhe case of John Beaamonl, F.R.S.. in his Tr^odsj 0/ 



184 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

basis,' he means 'the possibility of being shared by 
all persons with normal senses'. Nobody but the 
' percipient ' was present on the occasion just 
described, so we cannot say whether other people 
would have seen the visitor, or not. But reflection 
could not recognise the unreality of this ' percept,' 
till it was found that, in fact, the visitor had vanished, 
and had never been in the neighbourhood at all. 

Here then, are two classes of hallucinations, those 
which reflection shows us to be false {as if a sane 
man were to have the hallucination of a crocodile, 
or of a dead friend, entering the rooml. and those 
which reflection does not, at the moment, show to be 
false, as if a friend were to enter, who could be 
proved to have been absent- 
In either case, what causes the hallucination, or 
are there various possible sorts of causes? Now de- 
fects in the eye, or in the optic nerve, to speak roughly, 
may cause hallucinations from without. An injured 
external organ conveys a false and distorted message 
to the brain and to the intelHgence. A nascent 
malady of the ear may produce buzzings, and these 
may develop into hallucinatory voices. Here be 
hallucinations from without. But when a patient 
begins with a hallucination of the intellect, as that 
inquisitors are plotting to catch him, or witches to 
enchant him, and when he later comes to see in- 
quisitors and witches, where there are none, we 
have, apparently, a hallucination homwithin. Again, 
some persons, like Blake the painter, voluntarily 
start a hallucination. ' Draw me Edward I.,' a 
friend would say, Blake would, voluntarily, establish 



S, GHOSTS, AND HALLUCINATIONS, 185 

a hallucination of the monarch on a chair, in a good 
light, and sketch him, if nobody came between his 
eye and the royal sitter. Here, then, are examples 
of hallucinations begotten from ifithin, either volun- 
tarily, by a singular exercise of fancy, or involuntarily, 
as the suggestion of madness, of cerebral disease, or 
abnormal cerebral activity. 

Again a certain amount of intensity of activity, at 
a ' sensory centre ' in the brain, will start a 'percept '. 
Activity of the necessary force at the right place, may 
be normally caused by the organ of sense, say the eye, 
when fixed on a real object, say a candlestick, (i) 
Or the necessary activity at the sensory centre may 
be produced, abnormally, by irritation of the eye, or 
along the line of nerve from the eye to the ' sensory 
centre '. (2) Or thirdly, there may be a morbid, but 
spontaneous activity in the sensory centre itself. (3) 
In case one, we have a natural sensation converted 
into a perception of a real object. In case two, we 
have an abnormal origin of a perception of something 
unreal, a hallucination, begotten from without, that 
is by a vice in an external organ, the eye. In case 
three, we have the origin of an abnormal percep- 
tion of something unreal, a hallucination, begotten 
by a vicious activity within, in the sensory centre. 
But, while all these three sets of stimuli set the 
machinery in motion, it is the ' highest parts of the 
brain ' that, in response to the stimuli, create the full 
perception, real or hallucinatory. 

But there remains a fourth way of setting the 
machinery in motion, The first way, in normal 
sensation and perception, was the natural action of 



i86 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 



the origan of sense, stimulated by a material object. 
The second way was by the stimulus of a vice in the 
organ of sense. The third way was a vicious activity 
in a sensory centre. All three stimuli reach the 
' central terminus' of the brain, and are there created 
into perceptions, the first real and normal, the second 
a hallucination from an organ of sense, /row without, 
the third a hallucination from a sensory centre, /fowi 
within. The fourth way is illustrated when the 
machinery is set a-going from the 'central terminus' 
itself, 'from the higher parts of the brain, from the 
seats of ideation and memory'. Now, as long as 
these parts only produce and retain ideas or memories 
in the usual way, we think, or we remember, but we 
have no hallucination. But when the activity start- 
ing from the central terminus 'escapes downwards,' 
in sufficient force, it reaches the ' lower centre ' and 
the organ of sense, and then the idea, or memory, 
stands visibly before us as a hallucination. 

This, omitting many technical details, and much 
that is matter of more dispute than common, is a 
statement, rough, and as popular as possible, of the 
ideas expressed in Mr, Gurney's remarkable essay 
on hallucinations.' Here, then, we have a rude 
working notion of various ways in which hallucina- 
tions may be produced. But there are many de- 
grees in being hallucinated, or cnphantosmc, as the 
old French has it, If we are interested in the 
most popular kind of hallucinations, ghosts and 
wraiths, we first discard like Le Loyer, the evidence 
of many kinds of witnesses, diversely but undeni- 

' PvMndh:-! S. p. R., vnl. 151-189. 



APPARITIONS, GHOSTS, AND HALLUCINATIONS. 187 

ably hallucinated. A man whose eyes are so vicious 
as habitually to give him false information is not 
accepted as a witness, nor a man whose brain is 
drugged with alcohol, nor a man whose 'central 
terminus ' is abandoned to religious e.xcitement, to 
remorse, to grief, to anxiety, to an apprehension 
of secret enemies, nor even to a habit of being 
hallucinated, though, like Nicolai, he knows that 
his visionary friends are unreal. Thus we would 
not listen credulously to a ghost story out of his 
own experience from a man whose eyes were un- 
trustworthy, nor from a short-sighted man who had 
recognised a dead or dying friend on the street, nor 
from a drunkard. A tale of a vision of a religious 
character from Pascal, or from a Red Indian boy 
during his Medicine Fast, or even from a colonel 
of dragoons who fell at Prestonpans, might be in- 
teresting, but would not be evidence for our special 
purpose. The ghosts beheld by conscience-stricken 
murderers, by son^owing widowers, by spiritualists I 
in dark rooms, haunted by humbugs, or those seen ( 
by lunatics, or by children, or by timid people in 
lonely old houses, or by people who, though sane 
at the time, go mad twenty years later, or by sane 
people habitually visionary, these and many other 
ghosts, we must begin, like Le Loyer, by rejecting. 
These witnesses have too much cerebral activity 
at the wrong time and place. They start their 
hallucinations from the external terminus, the un- 
healthy organ of sense; from the morbid central 
terminus; or from some dilapidated cerebral station 
along the line, But, when we have, in a sane 



J 



180 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSB. 

man's experience, say one halkicination, whether that 
hallucination does, or does not coincide with a crisis 
in the life, or perhaps with the death of the person who 
seems to be seen, what are we to think? Or again, 
when several witnesses simultaneously have the same 
hallucination,- — ^not to be explainedas a common mis- 
inteqjretation of a real object, — what are we to think? 
This is the true question of ghosts and wraiths. 
That apparitions, so named by the world, do appear, 
is certain, just as it is certain that visionary rats 
appear to drunkards in delirium tremens. But, as 
we are only to take the evidence of sane and healthy 
witnesses, who were neither in anxiety, grief, or 
other excitement, when they perceived their one 
hallucination, there seems to be a difference between 
their hallucinations and those of alcoholism, fana- 
ticism, sorrow, or anxiety. Now the common 
mistakes in dealing with this topic have been to 
make too much, or to make too little, of the coinci- 
dences between the hallucinatory appearance of an 
absent person, and his death, or some other gi*ave 
crisis affecting him. Too little is made of such coin- 
cidences by Dr. Hibbert, in his Philosophy of Appari- 
tio?is (p. 231). He 'attempts a physical explanation of 
many ghost stories which may be considered most 
authentic '. So he says, but he only touches on three, 
the apparition of Claverhouse, on the night of Killie- 
crankie, to Lord Balcarres, in an Edinburgh prison; 
the apparition of her dead mother to Miss Lee, 
in 1662 ; and the apparition of his wife, who had 
bom a dead child on that day in England, to Dr. 
Donne in Paris, early in the seventeenth century. 



APPARITIONS, GHOSTS, AND HALLUCINATIONS. 189 

Dr. Hibbert dedicated his book, in 1825, to Sir 
Walter Scott, of Abbotsford, Bart., President of the 
Royal Society of Edinburgh. Sir Walter, at heart 
as great a ghost-hunter as ever lived, was conceived 
to have a scientific interest in ' the mental -principles 
to which certain popular illusions may be referred '. 
Thus Dr. Hibbert's business, if he would satisfy the 
President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, was 
to 'provide a physical explanation of many ghost 
stories which may be considered most authentic '. In 
our prosaic age, he would have begun with those 
most recent, such as the tall man in brown, viewed 
by Sir Walter on the moor near Ashestiel, and other 
still remembered contemporary hallucinations. Far 
from that, Dr. Hibbert deliberately goes back two 
centuries for all the three stories which represent 
the ■ many ' of his promise. The Wynyard ghost was 
near him, Mrs. Ricketts's haunted house was near 
him, plenty of other cases were lying ready to his 
hand.' But he went back two centuries, and then, 
— complained of lack of evidence about 'interesting 
particulars ' ! Dr. Hibbert represents the science and 
common-sense of seventy years ago, and his criticism 
probably represents the contemporary ideas about 
evidence. 

' Mrs. Ricketts was a sister of Lord St. Vincent, who Iried, in 
vain, ID discover the cause of the disturbanceE. Scott says (Dipinn- 
ology nnd Witchcraft, p. 360) ; ' Who has lieard or seen an authentic 
account from Lord St. Vincent? ' There is a full account in the 
Journal of the S. P. R. It appealed much too late for Sir Walter. 
Scott also complains of lack of details for the Wynyard story. They 
are now accessible. People were, in his time, afiaid to make their 
expeiienccs public 



igo 



COCK LAITE AND COMMON-SENSE. 



The Balcarres tale, as told by him, is that the 
Earl was ' in prison, in Edinburgh Castle, on the 
suspicion of Jacobitism'. 'Suspicion* is good; he 
was the King's agent for civil, as Dundee was for 
military affairs in Scotland. He and Dundee, and 
Aiiesbury, stood by the King in London, to the last. 
Lord Balcarres himself, in his memoirs, tells James 
n. how he was confined, 'in close prison,' in Edin- 
burgh, til! the castle was surrendered to the Prince 
of Orange. In Dr. Hibbert's tale, the spectre of 
Dundee enters Balcarres's room at night, 'draws 
his curtain," looks at him for some time, and walks 
out of the room, Lord Balcarres believing it to be 
Dundee himself. 

Dr. Hibbert never even asks for the authority on 
which this legend reposes; certainly Balcarres does 
not tell the tale in his own report, or memoirs, for 
James IL (Bannatyne Club, 1841). The doctor 
then grumbles that he doss not know ' a syllable of 
the state of Lord Balcarres's health at the time '. 
The friend of Bayle and of Marlborough, an honour- 
able politician, a man at once loyal and plain-spoken 
in dealings with his master, Lord Balcarres's 
word would go for much, if he gave it.' But Dr. 
Hibbert asks for no authority, cites none. He only 
argues that, ' agreeably to the well-known doctrine 
of chances,' Balcarres might as well have this 
hallucination at the time of Dundee's death as at 
any other (p. 232). Now, that is a question which 

'The atory is told by Charles Kkfcpairick Sharpe, in his 
Introduction to Law's McmoriatU, p. xci. Sharpe cites no source 
of the tradition. 



we cannot settle, without knowing whether Lord 
Batcarres was subject to hallucinations. If he 
was, cadit qucvslio, if he was not, then the case is 
different. It is, manifestly, a problem in statistics, 
and only by statistics of wide scope, can it be 
solved.' But Dr. Hibbert was content to produce 
his easy solution, without working out the problem, 

His second case is of 1662, and was taken down, 
he says, by the Bishop of Gloucester, from the lips 
of the father of Miss Lee. This young iady, in bed, 
saw a light, then a hallucination which called itself 
her mother. The figure prophesied the daughter's 
death at noon next day and at noon next day the 
daughter died. A physician, when she announced her 
vision, attended her, hied her, and could find nothing 
wrong in her health. Dr. Hibbert conjectures that 
her medical attendant did not know his business. 
' The coincidence was a fortunate ofic,' that is all his 
criticism. Where there is no coincidence, the stories, 
he says, are forgotten. For that very reason, he 
should have collected contemporary stories, capable 
of being investigated, but that did not occur to Dr. 
Hibbert. His last case is the apparition of Mrs. 
Donne, with a dead child, to Dr. Donne, in Paris, 
as recorded by Walton. As Donne was a poet, very 
fond of his wife, and very anxious about her health, 
this case is not evidential, and may be dismissed for 
' a fortuitous coincidence ' (p, ^32). 

Certainly Dr. Hibbert could come to no conclu- 

' We are not discussing Dreams, which are many, but waking 
hallucinations, which are, relatively rare, and are remembered, unlike 
Dreams, whether they are coincidental or not. 



Ig2 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

sion, save his own, on the evidence he adduces. 
But it was by his own fault that he chose only 
evidence very remote, incapable of being cross- 
examined, and scanty, while we know that plenty 
of contemporary evidence was within his reach. 
Possibly the possessors of these experiences would 
not have put them at his disposal, but, if he could 
get no materials, he was in no position to form a 
theory. All this would have been recognised in 
any other matter, but in this obscure branch of 
psychology, beset, as it is, by superstition, science 
was content to be casual. 

The error which lies at the opposite pole from 
Dr. Hibbcrt'a mistake in not collecting instances, is 
the error of collecting only affirmative instances. 
We hear constantly about ' hallucinations of sight, 
sound, or touch, which suggest the presence of an 
absent person, and which occur simultaneously with 
some exceptional crisis in that person's life, or, most 
frequently of all, with his death '.^ Now Mr. Gurney 
himself was much too fair a reasoner to avoid the 
collection of instantix contradiclorice, examples in 
which the hallucination occurs, but does not coincide 
with any crisis whatever in the life of the absent 
person who seems to be present. Of these cases, 
Dr. Hibbert could find only one on record, in the 
Mercure Gallaiti, January, 1690. The writer telis us 
how he dreamed that a dead relation of his came to 
his bedside, and announced that he must die that 
day. Unlike Miss Lee, he went on living. Yet the 
dream impressed him so much that he noted it down 

'Gumcy, op. cil., p. 1B7, 



I 



APPARITIONS, GHOSTS, AND HALLUCINATIONS. I93 

in writing as soon as he awoke. Dr. Johnson also 
[mentions an insiantia contradicioria. A friend of 
'Bosweli's, near Kilmarnock, heard his brother's voice 
call him by name : now his brother was dead, or 
dying, in America, Johnson capped this by his tale 
of having, when at Oxford, heard his name pro- 
nounced by his mother. She was then at Lich- 
field, but nothing ensued. In Dr. Hibbert's opinion, 
this proves that coincidences, when they do occur, 
are purely matters of chance.' There are many 
hallucinations, a death may correspond with one 
of them, that case is noted, the others are forgotten. 
Yet the coincidences are so many, or so striking, 
that when a Maori woman has a hallucination 
representing her absent husband, she may many 
without giving him recognised ground for resent- 
ment, if he happens to be alive. This curious fact 
proves that the coincidence between death and 
hallucinatory presence has been marked enough to 
suggest a belief which can modify savage jealousy.* 

' The writer knows a case in which a gertleman, who had gone 
to bed about eleven P.M., in Scotland, was roused by hearing hisown 
name loudly called. He searched his room in vain. His brother 
died suddenly, at the hour when he heard the voice, in Canada. But 
I the difference of time proves that the voice was heard several hours 
I before [he death. Here, then, is a chance coincidence, which looked 
r very like a case of Telepathy. Another will be found in Mr. Dale 
Owen's Debatable Land, p, 3G4. A gentleman died ' after break- 
fast ' in Rhenish Prussia, and appeared, before noon, in New York. 
Thus he appeared hours before he died, hut Mr. Dale Owen did not 
notice this fact. 

' Since writing the passage on the Maori belief in death-wraiths 
the author has received several examples of the opinion as it exists 
unong the Maoris, &om Mr. Hdward Tregear, F.G.S. 
13 



194 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 



By comparing coincidental with non-coincidental 
hallucinations known to him, Mr. Gurney is said to 
have decided that the chances against a death coin- 
ciding with a hallucination, were forty to one, — long I 
odds,^ But it is clear that only a very large collec- 
tion of facts would give us any materials for a decision. 
Suppose that some 20,000 people answer such ques- 
tions as : — - 

1. Have you ever had any hallucination ? 

2. Was there any coincidence between the hallu- 
cination and facts at the time unknown to you? 

The majority of sane people will be able to answer 
the first question in the negative. 

Of those who answer both questions in the affirm- 
ative, several things are to be said. First, we must | 
allow for jokes, then for illusions of memory. Cor- 
roborative contemporary evidence must be produced. 
Again, of the 20,000, many are likely to be selected in- 
stances. The inquirer is tempted to go to a person 
who, as he or she already knows, has a story to tell. 
Again, the inquirers are likely to be persons who take 
an interest in the subject on the affirmative side, and 
their acquaintances may have been partly chosen be- 
cause they were of the same intellectual complexion.* 

All these drawbacks are acknowledged to exist, 
and are allowed for, and, as far as possible, provided ' 
against, by the very fair-minded people who have J 
conducted this inquisition. Thus Mr. Henry j 
Sidgwick, in i88g, said, ' I do not think we can be 1 

^Procctdiiigs S. p. fl., XV. lo. 

•The writer has known a case in which a collector of Ihes 
Hlatistics disdained non- coincidental hallucinations as ' of no use ' 1 



satisfied with less than 50,000 answers'.' But these 
50,000 answers have not been received. When we 
reflect that, to our knowledge, out of twenty-five 
questions asked among our acquaintances in one 
place, none would be answered in the affirmative: 
while, by selecting, we could get twenty-five affirma- 
tive replies, the delicacy and diiliculty of the inquisi- 
tion becomes painfully evident. Mr. Sidgwick, after 
making deductions on all sides of the most sports- 
manlike character, still holds that the coincidences 
are more numerous by far than the Calculus of Pro- 
babilities admits. This is a question for the ad- 
vanced mathematician. M. Richet once made some 
experiments which illustrate the problem. One man 
in a room thought of a series of names which, ex 
hypothcsi, he kept to himself. Three persons sat at a 
table, which, as tables will do, ' tilted,' and each tilt 
rang an electric bell. Two other persons, concealed 
from the view of the table tilters, ran through an alpha- 
bet with a pencil, marking each letter at which the bell 
rang. These letters were compared with the names 
secretly thought of by the person at neither table. 



He Ihougkl 0/ 


The answers were 


I. Jean Racine 


I. Igard 


2. Legros 


2. Neghn 


3. Esther 


3. Foqdem 


4. Henrietta 


4. Higiegmsd 


5. Cheuvreux 


5. Dievoreq 


6, Doremond 


6. Epjerod 


7. Chevalon 


7. Cheval 


8. Allouand 


8. Iko 


^Proccidms' S. P. R., xv. 7. 



196 COCK LANS AND COMMON-SENSE. 

Here the non-mathematical reader will exclaim : 
'Total failure, except in case 7 ! ' And, about that 
case, he will have his private doubts. But, arguing 
mathematically, M. Richet proves that the table was 
right, beyond the limits of mere chance, by fourteen 
to two. He concludes, on the whole of his experi- 
ments, that, probably, intellectual force in one brain 
may be echoed in another brain. But MM. Binet and 
F6r6, who report this, decide that 'the calculation of 
chances is, for the most part, incapable of affording 
a peremptory proof; it produces uncertainty, dis- 
quietude, and doubt'. ^ 'Yet something is gained 
by substituting doubt for systematic denial. Richet 
has obtained this important result, that henceforth 
the possibihty of mental suggestion cannot be met 
with contemptuous rejection.' 

Mental suggestion on this limited scale, is a 
phenomenon much less startling to belief than the 
reality, and causal nature, of coincidental hallucina- 
tions, of wraiths. But it is plain that, as far as 
general opinion goes, the doctrine of chances, applied 
to such statistics of hallucinations as have been 
collected, can at most, only ' produce uncertainty, 
disquietude, and doubt'. Yet if even these are 
produced, a step has been made beyond the blank 
negation of Hibbert. 

The genera] reader, even if credulously inclined, 
is more staggered by a few examples of non-coinci- 
dental hallucinations, than confirmed by a pile of 
coincidental examples. Now it seems to be a defect 
in the method of the friends of wraiths, that they do 
^Animal Magnttism, pp. 61-64, 1887. 



APPARITIONS, GHOSTS, AND HALLUCINATIONS, I97 

not publish, with full and impressive details, as many 
examples of non-coincidental as of coincidental 
hallucinations. It is the story that takes the public : 
if we are to be fair we must give the non-coincidental 
story in all its features, as is done in the matter of 
wraiths with a kind of message or meaning. 

Let us set a good example, by adducing wraiths 
which, in slang phrase, were 'sells". Those which we 
have at first hand are marked '(A),' those at second 
hand '(B)'. But the world will accept the story of a 
ghost that failed on very poor evidence indeed. 

I. (A) A young lady, in the dubious state between 
awake and asleepj unable, in fact, to feel certain 
whether she was awake or asleep, beheld her late 
grandmother. The old lady wept as she sat by the 
bedside. 

' Why do you weep, grandmamma, are 3'ou not 
happy where you are ? ' asked the girl. 

' Yes, I am happy, but I am weeping for your 
mother.' 

' Is she going to die ? ' 

' No, but she is going to lose you.' 

' Am / going to die, grandmamma ? ' 

' Yes, my dear.' 

' Soon ? ■ 

' Yes, my dear, very soon.' 

The young lady, with great courage, concealed her 
dream from her mother, but confided it to a brother. 
She did her best to be good while she was on earth, 
where she is still, after an interval of many years. 

Except for the conclusion, and the absence of a 
mystic bright light in the bedroom, this case exactly 



198 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

answers to that of Miss Lee, in 1662, Dr. Hibbert 
would have liked this example. 

z. (B) A lady, staying with a friend, observed 
that one morning she was much depressed. The 
friend confided to her that, in the past night, she had 
seen her brother, dripping wet. He told her that 
he had been drowned by the upsetting of a boat, 
which was attached by a rope to a ship. At this 
time, he was on his way home from Australia. The 
dream, or vision, was recorded in writing. When 
next the first lady met her friend, she was entertain- 
ing her brother at luncheon. He had never even 
been in a boat dragged behind a ship, and was 
perfectly safe. 

3. (B) A lady, residing at a distance from Oxford 
wrote to tell her son, who was at Merton College, 
that he had just entered her room and vanished. 
Was he well ? Yes, he was perfectly well, and 
bowling for the College Eleven. 

4. (B) A lady in bed saw her absent husband. 
He announced his death by cholera, and gave her 
his blessing, she, of course, was very anxious and 
miserable, but the vision was a lying vision. The 
husband was perfectly well. In all these four cases, 
anxiety was caused by the vision, and in three at 
least, action was taken, the vision was recorded 
orally, or in writing. In the following set, the 
visions were waking hallucinations of sane persons 
never in any other instance hallucinated, 

5. (A) A person of distinction, walking in a cer- 
tain Cambridge quadrangle, met a very well-known 
clergyman. The former held out his hand, but 



APPARITIONS, GHOSTS, AND HALLUCINATIONS. 

there was before him only open space. No feeling 
of excitement or anxiety followed. 

6, (A) The writer, standing before dinner, at a 
table in a large and brilliantly lit hall, saw the door 
of the drawing-room open, and a little K'fl, related 
to himself, come out, and run across the hall into 
another room. He spoke to her, but she did not 
answer. He instantly entered the drawing-room, 
where the child was sitting in a white evening-dress. 
When she ran across the hall, the moment before, 
she was dressed in dark blue serge. No explanation 
of the puzzle could be discovered, but it is fair to 
add that no anxiety was excited. 

7. (A) A young lady had a cold, and was wearing 
a brown shawl. After lunch she went to her room. 
A few minutes later, her sister came out, saw her in 
the hall, and went upstairs after her, telling her an 
anecdote. At the top of the stairs, the brown-shawled 
sister vanished. The eider sister was in her room, 
in a white shawl. She was visible, when absent on 
another occasion, to another spectator. • 

In two other cases (A) ladies, in their usual 
health, saw their husbands in their rooms, when, in 
fact, they were in the drawing-room or study. Here 
then are eight cases of non-coincidental hallucina- 
tion, some of people awake, some of people probably 
on the verge of sleep, which are wholly without 
'coincidence,' wholly unveridical. None of the 
' percipients ' was addicted to seeing ' visions about '.' 

'The Psychical Society has published the writer's encounter 
with PtofcasDi Conington, at Oxfoid, in iS&j, when the prolessot 
was lying within one or two days of his dcatli at BoBlon, a 



fiOO COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

On the other side, though the writer knows 
several people who have 'seen ghosts ' in haunted 
houses, and other odd phenomena, he knows nobody, 
at first hand, who has seen a ' veridical hallucina- 
tion,' or rather, knows only one, a very young one 
indeed. Thus, between these personally collected 
statistics of spectral 'sells' on one part, and the 
world-wide diffusion of belief in ' coincidental ' hallu- 
cination on the other, the human mind is left in a 
balance which mathematics, and the Calculus of 
Probabilities (especially if one does not understand 
it) fail to aiTect. 

Meanwhile, we still do not know what causes 
these solitary hallucinations of the sane. They 
can hardly come from diseased organs of sense, 
for these would not confine themselves to a single 
mistaken message of great vivacity. And why 
should either the ' sensory centre ' or the ' central 
terminus 'just once in a lifetime develop this uncanny 
activity, and represent to us a person to whom 
we may be wholly indifferent ? The explanation 
is less difficult when the person represented is a 
husband or child, but even then, why does the activ- 
ity occur once, and only once, and not in a moment 
of anxiety ? 

circumstance wholly unknmvn to the percipient. But no jury would 
accept this aa anything but acaEie of mistaken identity, natural in a 
shoit-aighted man's vague experiences. Mr. Conington was not a 
man easily to be mistaken for another, nor were many men likely to be 
mistaken for Mr. Conington. Yet this is what muat have occurred. 
There was no conceivable reason why the professor should ' telepathi- 
cally' communicate with the percipient, who had never exchanged 
a. ward with him, except in an examination. 



APPARITIONS, GHOSTS, AND HALLUCINATIONS. 201 

The coincidental hallucinations are laid to the 
door of ' telepathy,' to ' a telepathic impact from 
the mind of an absent agent,' who is dying, or 
in some other state of rare or exciting experience, 
perhaps being marned, as in Col. Meadows Taylor's 
case. This is a theory as old as Lavaterus, and 
was proclaimed by \fayo in the middle of the 
century; while, substituting 'angels' for human 
agents, Frazer of Tiree used it, in 1700, to explain 
second sight. Nay, it is the Norse theory of 
a 'sending' by a sorcerer, as we read in the 
Icelandic sagas. But, admitting that telepathy 
may be a cause of hallucinations, we often find the 
effect where the cause is not alleged to exist. No- 
body, perhaps, will explain our nine empty halluci- 
nations by ' telepathy,' yet, from the supposed effects 
of telepathy they were indistinguishable. Are all 
such cases of casual hallucination in the sane to be 
explained by telepathy, by an impact of force from 
a distant brain on the central terminus of our own 
brains? At all events, a casual hallucination of the 
presence of an absent friend need obviously cause 
us very little anxiety. We need not adopt the 
hypothesis of the Maoris, 

The telepathic theory has the advantage of 
cutting down the marvellous to the minimum. It 
also accounts for that old puzzle, the clothes worn 
by the ghosts. These are reproduced by the '' agent's' 
THeoi^^"^T "himself, perhaps with some unconscious 
assistance from 'the percipient'. For lack of this 
light on the matter, M. d'Assier, a positivist, who 
believed in spectres, had to suggest that the ghosts 



202 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

wear the ghosts of garments! Thus positivism, in 
this disciple, returned to the artless metaphysics 
of savages. Telepathy saves the believer from such 
a humiliating relapse, and, perhaps, telepathy also 
may be made to explain ' collective ' hallucinations, 
when several people see the same apparition. If 
a distant mind can thus demoralise the central 
terminus of one brain, it may do as much for two or 
more brains, or they may demoralise each other. 

Al! this is very promising, but telepathy breaks 
down when the apparition causes some change in the 
relations of material objects. If there be a physical 
effect which endures after the phantasm has vanished, 
then there was an actual agent, a real being, a 
'ghost' on the scene. For instance, the lady in 
Scott's ballad, ' The Eve of St, John," might see and 
might hear the ghost of her lover by a telepathic hallu- 
cination of two senses. But if 

The asble score, of fingers tour, 

Remained on the boajd impressed 

by the Spectre, then there was no telepathic hallucina- 
tion, but an actual being of an awful kind was in 
Smailholm Tower. Again, the cases in which dogs 
and horses, as Paracelsus avers, display terror when 
men and women behold a phantasm, are not easily 
accounted for by telepathy, especially when the beast 
is alarmed before the man or woman suspects the pre- 
sence of anything unusual. There is, of course, the 
notion that the horse shies, or the dog turns craven, in 
sympathy with its master's exhibition of fear. Owners 
of dogs and horses may counterfeit hoiTor and see 
whether their favourites do sympathise. Cats don't. 



APPARITIONS, GHOSTS, AND HALLUCINATIONS. 203 

In one of three cases knoivn to us where a cat 
showed consciousness of a spectral presence, the 
apparition took the furm of a cat. The evidence is 
only that of Richard Bovet, in his Pandemonium ; 
or, the Devil's Cloyster (1684). In Mr. J. G. 
Wood's Man and Beast, a lady tells a story of 
being alone, in firelight, playin^^ with a favourite cat. 
Lady Catherine. Suddenly puss bristled all over, 
her back rose in an arch, and the lady, looking up, 
saw a hideously malignant female watching her, 
Lady Catherine now rushed wildly round the room, 
leaped at the upper panels of the door, and seemed 
to have gone mad. This new terror recalled the 
lady to herself. She shrieked, and the phantasm 
vanished. She saw it on a later day. In a third 
case, a cat merely kept a watchful eye on the ghost, 
and adopted a dignified attitude of calm expectancy. 
If beasts can be lelepathically affected, then beasts 
have more of a 'psychical' element in their com- 
position than they usually receive credit for ; whereas 
if a ghost is actually in view, there is no reason why 
beasts should not see it. 

The best and most valid proof that an abnormal 
being is actually present was that devised by the 
ghost of Sir Richard of Coldinghame in the ballad, 
and by the Beresford ghost, who threw a heavy 
curtain over the bed-pole. Unluckily, Sir Richard 
is a poetical figment, and the Beresford ghost is a 
myth, like William Tell : he may be traced back 
through various medifeval authorities almost to the 
date of the Norman Conquest. We have examined 
the story in a little book of folk-lore. Eludes Tra- 



204 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

dilionistcs. Always there is a compact to appear, 
always the ghost burns or injures the hand or 
wrist of the spectator. A version occurs in William 
of Malmesbury. 

What we need, to prove a ghost, and disprove an 
exclusively telepathic theory, is a ghost who is not 
only seen, heard, or even touched, but a ghost who 
produces some change in physical objects. Most 
provokingly, there are agencies at every successful 
seance, and in every affair of the Poltergeist, who do 
lift tables, chairs, beds, bookcases, candles, and so 
forth, while others play accordions. But then nobody 
or not everybody sees these agencies at work, while 
the spontaneous phantasms which are seen do not 
so much as lift a loo-table, generally speaking. In 
the spiritualistic cases, we have the effect, with no 
visible cause ; in ghost stories, we have the visible 
presence, but he very seldom indeed causes any 
physical change in any object. No ghost who does 
not do this has any strict legal claim to be regarded 
as other than a telepathic hallucination at best, 
though, as we shall see, some presumptions exist in 
favour of some ghosts being real entities. 

These rare facts have not escaped a ghost-hunter 
so intelligent as Mrs. Henry Sidgwick. This lady 
is almost too sportsmanlike, for a psychical re- 
searcher, in her habit of giving an apparition the 
benefit of every imaginable doubt which may absolve 
him from the charge of being a real genuine ghost. 
' It is true,' she says, ' that ghosts are alleged some- 
times to produce a physical effect on the external 
world ; ' but to admit this is ' to come into prima facie 



APPARITIONS, GHOSTS, AND HALLUCINATIONS. 205 

collision with the physical sciences ' (an awful risk to 
run), so Mrs. Sidgwick. in a rather cavalier manner 
leaves ghosts who produce physical effects to be dealt 
with among the phenomena alleged to occur at 
seancss. Now this is hardly fair to the spontaneous 
apparition, who is doing his very best to demonstrate 
his existence in the only convincing way. The 
phenomena of seances are looked on with deserved 
distrust, and, generally, may be regarded as an out- 
worn mode of swindling. Yet it is to this society 
that Mrs. Sidgwick relegates the most meritorious 
and conscientious class of apparitions. 

Let us examine a few instances of the ghost 
who visibly moves material objects. We take one 
(already cited) from Mrs. Sidgwick's own article.^ 
In this case a gentleman named John D. Harrj' 
scolded his daughters for saying that they had 
seen a ghost, with which he himself was perfectly 
familiar. ' The figure,' a fair woman draped in 
white, ' on seven or eight occasions appeared in 
my bedroom, and twice in the library, and on one 
occasion it lifted up the mosquito-curtains, and looked 
closely into my face'. Now, could a hallucination 
lift a mosquito-curtain, or even produce the impres- 
sion that it did so, while the curtain was really un- 
moved? Clearly a hallucination, however artful, 
and well got up, could do no such thing. Therefore 
a being — a ghost with very little maidenly reserve — 
haunted the bedroom of Mr. HaiTy, if he tells a true 
tale. Again (p. 115), a lady (on whose veracity I 
am ready to pledge my all) had doors opened for her 
' Procccdhigi of Society for Psychical Retearch, viii. iii. 



206 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

frequently, ' as if a hand had turned the handl 
And once she not only saw the door open, but a p"ey 
woman came in. Another witness, years afterwards 
beheld the same figure and the same performance, 
Once more, Miss A. M.'s mother followed a ghost, 
who opened a door and entered a room, where she 
could not be found when she was wanted (p. 121}. 
Again,^ a lady saw a ghost which, 'with one hand, 
the left, drew back the curtain'. There are many 
other cases in which apparitions are seen in houses 
where mysterious thumps and raps occur, especially 
in General Campbell's experience {p. 483). If the 
apparition gave the thumps then he (or, in this in- 
stance, she) was material, and could produce effects 
on matter. Indeed, this ghost was seen to take up and 
lay down some books, and to tuck in the bed-clothes. 
Hallucinations (which are all in one's eye or sen- 
sory centre, or cerebi^al central terminus), cannot 
draw curtains, or open doors, or pick up books, or 
tuck in bed-clothes, or cause thumps— not real 
thumps, hallucinatory thumps are different. Con- 
sequently, if the stories are true, some apparitions are 
ghosts, real objective entities, filling space. The senses 
of a hallucinated person may be deceived as to touch, 
and as to feeling the breath of a phantasm (a likely 
story), as well as in sight and hearing. But a visible 
ghost which produces changes in the visible world 
cannot be a hallucination. On the other hand Dr. 
Binns, in his Anatomy of Sleep tells us of 'a gentleman 
who, in a dream, pushed against a door in a distant 
house, so that those in the room were scarcely able 
' Procitdings of Society for Psychical Research, xiv. 442. 



APPARITIONS, GHOSTS, AND HALLUCINATIONS. ^0^ 

to resist the pressure '.^ Now if this rather stagger- 
ing anecdote be true, the spirit of a living man, being 
able to affect matter, is also, so to speak, material, 
and is an actual entity, an astral body. Moreover, 
Mrs. Frederica Hauffe, when in the magnetic sleep, 
' could rap at a distance '. 

These arguments, then, make in favour of the old- 
fashioned theory of ghosts and wraiths, as things 
objectively existing, which is very comforting to a 
conservative philosopher. Unluckily, just as many, 
or more, anecdotes look quite the other way. For 
instance. General Barter sees, hears, and recognises 
the dead Lieutenant B., wearing a beard which he 
had grown since the general saw him in life. He 
also sees the hill-pony ridden by Mr. B., and 
killed by him — a steed with which, in its mortal days, 
the general had no acquaintance. This is all very 
well : a dead pony may have a ghost, like Miss A. 
B.'s dog which was heard by one Miss B.. and seen 
by the other, some time after its decease. On mature 
reflection, as both ladies were well-known persons of 
letters, we suppress their names, which would carry 
the weight of excellent character and distinguished 
sense. But Lieutenant B. was also accompanied by 
two grooms. Now, it is too much to ask us to be- 
lieve that he had killed two grooms, as he killed the 
pony.* Consequently, they, at least, were hallu- 
cinations; so what was Lieutenant B. ? When Mr. 
K., on board the Racoon, saw his dead father lying 

''Modim Spirit Mamfeitatiom. By Adin Ballou. Liverpool, 
1853- 

' Proceedings of Society for Psychkai Riscarch, liv. 469. 



2o8 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 



in his coffin (p. 461), there was no real coffin there, 
at all events; and hence, probably, no real dead 
father's Rhost, — only a 'telepathic hallucination'. 
Miss Rose Morton could never touch the female ghost 
which she often chased about the house, nor did this 
ghost break or displace the threads stretched by Miss 
Morton across the stairs down which the apparition 
walked. Yet its footsteps did make a noise, and the 
family often heard the ghost walking downstairs, 
followed by Miss Morton. Thus this ghost was both 
material and immaterial, for surely, only matter can 
make a noise when in contact with matter. On the 
whole, if the evidence is worth anything, there are 
real objective ghosts, and there are also telepathic 
hallucinations : so that the scientific attitude is to 
believe in both, if in either. And this was the view 
of Petrus Thyraeus, S.J., in his Loca Infesia (1598), 
The alternative is to believe in neither. 

We have thus, according to the advice of Socrates, 
permitted the argument to lead us whither it would. 
And whither has it led us ? The old, savage, natural 
theory of ghosts and wraiths is that they are spirits, 
yet not so immaterial but that they can fill space, 
be seen, heard, touched, and affect material objects. 
Mediseval and other theologians preferred to regard 
them as angelic or diabolic manifestations, made out 
of compressed air, or by aid of bodies of the dead, 
or begotten by the action of angel or devil on the 
substance of the brain. Modern science looks on 
them as hallucinations, sometimes morbid, as in 
madness or delirium, or in a vicious condition of 
the organ of sense; sometimes abnormal, but not 



APPARITIONS, GHOSTS, AND HALLUCINATIONS. Zog 

necessarily a proof of chronic disease of any descrip- 
tion. The psychical theory then explains a sifted 
remnant of apparitions ; the coincidental, ' veridical " 
hallucinations of the sane, by telepathy. There is a 
wide chasm, however, to be bridged over between 
that hypothesis, and its general acceptance, either 
by science, or by reflective yet unscientific inquirers. 
The existence of thought-transference, especially 
among people wide awake, has to be demonstrated 
more unimpeachably, and then either the telepathic 
explanation must be shown to fit all the cases col- 
lected, or many interesting cases must be thrown 
overboard, or these must be referred to some other 
cause. That cause will be something very like the 
old-fashioned ghosts. Perhaps, the most remark- 
able collective hallucination in history is that vouched 
for by Patrick Walker, the Covenanter ; in his Bio- 
graphia Presbyteriana} In 1686, says Walker, about 
two miles below Lanark, on the water of Clyde ' many 
people gathered together for several afternoons, where 
there were showers of bonnets, hats, guns, and swords, 
which covered the trees and ground, companies of 
men in arms marching in order, upon the water- 
side, companies meeting companies, . . . and then 
all falling to the ground and disappearing, and other 
companies immediately appearing in the same way'. 
This occurred in June and July, in the afternoons. 
Now the Westland Whigs were then, as usual, in a* 
very excitable frame of mind, and filled with fears, 
inspired both by events, and by the prophecies of 
Peden and other saints. Patrick Walker himself 
' Edinburgh, 1827, vol. i. p. xxxii. 



210 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

was a high-flying Covenanter, he was present : ' I 
went there three afternoons together ' — and he saw 
nothing unusua! occur. About two-thirds of the 
crowd did see the phenomena he reckons, the others, 
hke himself, saw nothing strange. ' There was a fright 
and trembling upon them that did see," and, at least 
in one case, the hallucination was contagious. A 
gentleman standing next Walker exclaimed ; ' A pack 
of damned witches and warlocks, that have the 
second sight, the deil ha't do 1 see '. ' And immedi- 
ately there was a discemable change in his counte- 
nance, with as much fear and trembling as any woman 
I saw there, who cried out : " O all ye that do not 
see, say nothing; for I perswade you it is matter 
of fact, and discernable to all that is not stone-blind".' 
Those who did see minutely described ' what handles 
the swords had, whether small or three-barred, or 
Highland guards, and the closing knots of the bonnets, 
black or blue. ... I have been at a loss ever since 
what to make of this last,' says Patrick Walker, and 
who is not at a loss ? The contagion of the halluci- 
nation, so to speak, did not affect him, fanatic as he 
was, and did affect a cursing and swearing cavalier, 
whose prejudices, whose 'dominant idea,' were all 
on the other side. The Psychical Society has 
published an account of a similar collective hallu- 
cination of crowds of people, ' appearing and disap- 
pearing,' shared by two young ladies and their maid, 
on a walk home from church. But this occurred in 
a fog, and no one was present who was not halluci- 
nated, Patrick Walker's account is triumphantly 
honest, and is, perhaps, as odd a piece of psychology 



APPARITIONS, GHOSTS, AND HALLUCINATIONS. 211 

as any on record, thanks to his escape from the pre- 
valent illusion, which, no doubt, he would gladly 
have shared. Wodrow, it should be said, in his 
History of the Sufferings of the Kirk, mentions visions 
of bonnets, which, he thinks, indicated a future 
muster of militia ! But he gives the date as 1684. 



SCRYING OR CRYSTAL-GAZING. 



Revival of crystal-gating. Antiquity of Hie practice. lis 
general Aarmlessness. Superstitious explanaiions. 
Cryslal-gasing and 'illusions hypnagogigues' . Visual- 
isers. Poetic vision. Ancient and savage practices 
analogous to crystal-gazing. New Zealand. North 
America. Egypt. Sir Wallet's interest in the subject. 
Mr. Kinglake. Greek examples. Dr. Dee. Miss X. 
Anotlitr modern instance. Successes and failures. Re- 
vival of lost memories. Possible thought-transference. 
Inferences from antiquity and diffusion of practice. 
Based on actual experience. Anecdotes of Dr. Gregory. 
Children as visionaries. Not to be encouraged. 

The practice of 'scrying,' 'peeping,' or 'crystal-gaz- 
ing,' has been revived in recent years, and is, perhaps, 
the only ' occuh ' diversion which may be free from 
psychological or physical risk, and which it is easy 
not to mix with superstition. The antiquity and 
world-wide diffusion of scrying, in one form or other, 
interests the student of human nature. Meanwhile 
the comparatively few persons who can see pictures 
in a clear depth, may be as innocently employed 
while so doing, as if they were watching the clouds, 
or the embers. ' May be," one must say, for crystal- 
seers are very apt to fall back on our old friend, the 
animistic hypothesis, and to explain what they see, or 
fancy they see, by the theory that ' spirits ' are at the 



i OR CRVSTAL-GAZING. 21^ 

bottom of it ali. In Mrs, de Morgan's work From 
Matter to Spirit, suggestions of this kind are not 
absent ; 'As an explanation of crystal-seeing, a 
spiritual drawing was once made, representing a 
spirit directing on the crjstal a stream of influence,' 
and so forth. Mrs. de Morgan herself seemed 
rather to hold that the act of staring at a crystal 
mesmerises the observer, The person who looks at 
it often becomes sleepy, ' Sometimes the eyes close, 
at other times tears flow.' People who become 
sleepy, or cry, or get hypnotised, will probably 
consult their own health and comfort by leaving 
crystal balls alone. 

There are others, however, who are no more 
hypnotised by crystal-gazing than tea-drinking, 
or gardening, or reading a book, and who can still 
enjoy visions as beautiful as those of the opium 
eater, without any of the reaction. Their con- 
dition remains perfectly normal, that is, they are 
wide awake to all that is going on. In some way 
their fancy is enlivened, and they can behold, in 
the glass, just such vivid pictures as many persons 
habitually see between sleeping and waking, illusions 
kypnagogiques. These ' hypnagogic illusions' Pontus 
de Tyard described in a pretty sonnet, more than 
three hundred years ago. Maury, in his book on 
dreams has recorded, and analysed them. They 
represent faces, places, a page of print, a flame of 
fire, and so forth, and it is one of their peculiarities 
that the faces rapidly shift and alter, generally from 
beautiful to ugly, A crystal-seer seems to be a | 
person who can see, in a glass, while awake and | 



214 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE, 



with open eyes, visions akin to those whicli perhaps 
the majority of people see with shut eyes, between 
sleeping and waking.' It seems probable that people 
who, when they think, see a mental picture of the 
subject of their thoughts, people who are good 
' visuahsers,' are likely to succeed best with the 
crystal, some of them can 'visualise' purposely, in 
the crystal, while others cannot. Many who are 
very bad 'visualisers,' like the writer, who think 
in words, not in pictures, see bright and distinct 
hypnagogic illusions, yet see nothing in the crystal, 
however long they stare at it. And there are crystal- 
seers who are not subject to hypnagogic illusions. 
These facts, like the analogous facts of the visualisa- 
tion of arithmetical figures, analysed by Mr. Qalton, 
show interesting varieties in the conduct of mental 
operations. Thus we speak of ' vision ' in a poet, 
or novelist, and it seems likely that men of genius 
'see' their fictitious characters and landscapes, while 
people of critical temperament, if they attempt 
creative work, are conscious that they do not create, 
but construct. On the other hand many incompetent 
novelists are convinced that they have 'vision,' that 
they see and hear their characters, but they do not, 
as genius does, transfer the 'vision' to their readers. 
This is a digression from the topic of hallucina- 
tions caused by gazing into a clear depth. Forms 



' In the author's case the hypnagogic phantasms seem to be 
created out of the floating spots of light which remain when the eyes 
are shut. Some crystal -gazers find that similar points de refiri in 
Ihe glass, are the Etarting- points of pictures in the crystal. Others 
cannot trace any such connection. 



SCRYING OR CRYSTAL-GAZING. 2I5 

of ciystal-gazing, it is well known, are found among 
savages. The New 2ealanders, according to Taylor, 
gaze in a drop of blood, as the Egyptians do in a 
drop of ink. In North America, the Pere le Jeune 
found that a kind of thought reading was practised 
thus: it was behaved that a sick person had certain 
desires, if these could be gratified, he would recover. 
The sorcerers, therefore, gazed into water in a bowl 
expecting to see there visions of the desired objects. 
The Egyptian process with the boy and the ink, is 
too familiar to need description. In Scott's Journal 
(ii. 419) we read of the excitement which the reports 
of Lord Prudboe^ and Colonel Felix, caused among 
the curious. A boy, selected by these English 
gentlemen, saw and described Shakspeare, and 
Colonel Felix's brother, who had lost an arm. The 
ceremonies of fumigation, and the preliminary 
visions of flags, and a sultan, are not necessary in 
modern crystal-gazing. Scott made inquiries at 
Malta, and wished to visit Alexandria. He was 
attracted, doubtless, by the resemblance to Dr, Dee's 
tales of his magic ball, and to the legends of his 
own Aunt Margaret's Mirror. The Quarterly Review 
(No. 117, pp. 196-208) offers an explanation which 
explains nothing. The experiments of Mr. Lane 
were tolerably successful, those of Mr. Kinglake, in 
Eothcn, were amusingly the reverse. Dr. Keate, the 
flogging headmaster of Eton, was described by the 
seer as a beautiful girl, with golden hair and blue 
eyes. The modern explanation of successes would 

' Compare Blackwood, August, 1S31. in NocU-i Ambrosiatiff. 



2l6 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

apparently be that the boy does, occasionally, see 
the reflection oi his interrogator's thoughts. 

In a paper in the Proceedings of the Society for 
Psychical Research (part xiv.), an anonymous writer 
gives the results of some historical investigation into 
the antiquities of crystal-gazing. The stories of 
cups, 'wherein my lord divines,' like Joseph, need 
not necessarily indicate gazing into the deeps of the 
cup. There were other modes of using cups and 
drops of wine, not connected with visions. At 
Patrae, in Greece, Pausanias describes the dropping 
of a mirror on to the surface of a well, the burning 
of incense, and the vision of the patient who consults 
the oracle in the deeps of the mirror.' A Christian 
Father asserts that, in some cases, a basin with a 
glass bottom was used, through which the fjazer saw 
persons concealed in a room below, and took thera 
for real visions." In mirror-magic (catoptromancy) , 
the child seer's eyes were bandaged, and he saw with 
the top of his head ! The Spccularii continued the 
tradition through the Middle Ages, and, in the six- 
teenth century Dr. Dee ruined himself hy his in- 
fatuation for ' show-stones,' in which Kelly saw, or 
pretended to see, visions which Dr. Dee interpreted. 
Dee kept voluminous diaries of his experiments, 
part of which is published in a folio by Meric 
Casaubon. The work is flighty, indeed crazy; Dee 
thought that the hallucinations were spirits, and 
believed that his 'show-stones' were occasionally 
spirited away by the demons. Kelly pretended to 
hear noises in the stones, and to receive messages, 
' Paus., ii, n, I. " Bouch^ Lecleicq, i. 339. 



In our own time, while many can see pictures, 
few know what the pictures represent. Some explain 
them hy interpretin^r the accompanying 'raps,' or by 
'automatic writing'. The intelligence thus conveyed 
is then found to exist in county histories, newspapers, 
and elsewhere, a circumstance which lends itself to 
interpretation of more sorts than one. Without these 
very dubious modes of getting at the meaning of the 
crystal pictures, they remain, of course, mere pictur- 
esque hallucinations. The author of the paper re- 
ferred to, is herself a crystal-seer, and (in Borderland 
No. 2) mentions one very interesting vision. She 
and a friend stared into one of Dr. Dee's 'show- 
stones,' at the Stuart exhibition, and both beheld 
the same scene, not a scene they could have guessed 
al, which was going on at the seer's own house, As 
this writer, though versed in hallucinations, entirely 
rejects any ' spiritual ' theory, and conceives that 
she is dealing with purely psychological curiosities, 
her evidence is the better worth notice, and may be 
compared with that of a crystal-seer for whose 
evidence the present writer can vouch, as far as one 
mortal may vouch for that of another. 

Miss X,, the writer in the Psychical Proceedings, 
has been able to see pictures in crystals and other 
polished surfaces, or, indeed, independently of these, 
since childhood, She thinks that the visions are: — 

1. After-images, or recrudescent memories (often 
memories of things not consciously noted). 

2. Objectivations of ideas or images, consciously 
or unconsciously present to the mind. 

3. Visions, possibly telepathic or clairvoyant, 



2l8 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 



implying acquirenient ol' knowledge by supernormal 
means. The first class is much the most frequent 
in this lady's experience. She can occasionally 
refresh her memory by looking into the crystal. 

The other seer, known to the writer, cannot do 
this, and her pictures, as far as she knows, are purely 
fanciful. Perhaps an 'automatic writer" might 
interpret them, in the rather dubious manner of that 
art. As far as the 'sciyer' knows, however, her 
pictures of places and people are not revivals of 
memory. For example, she sees an ancient ship, 
with a bird's beak for prow, come into harbour, 
and behind it a man carrying a crown. This is a 
mere fancy picture. On one occasion she saw a 
man. like an Oriental priest, with a white caftan, 
contemplating the rise and fall of a fountain of fire : 
suddenly, at the summit of the fire, appeared a 
human hand, pointing downwards, to which the old 
priest looked up. This was in August, 1893. Later 
in the month the author happened to take up, at 
Loch Sheil, Lady Burton's Lt/e of Sir Richard Burton. 
On the back of the cover is a singular design in goM. 
A woman in widow's weeds is bowing beneath rays 
of light, over which appears a human hand, marked 
R. F. B. on the wrist. The author at once wrote 
asking his friend the crystal-gazer if she had seen 
this work of art, which might have unconsciously 
suggested the picture. The lady, however, was 
certain that she had not seen the Life of Sir Richard 
Burton, though her eye, of course, may have fallen 
on it in a bookseller's shop, while her mind did not 
consciously take it in. If this was a revival of a 



sub-conscious memory in the crystal, it was the only 
case of that process in her experience. 

On the other hand Miss X. can trace many of her 
visions to memories, as Maurj' could in his illusions 
hyptiagogiques. Thus, Miss X. saw in the crystal, the 
printed announcement of a triend's death. She had 
not consciously read the Times, but remembered that 
she had held it up before her face as a firescreen. 
This kind of revival, as she says, corresponds to the 
writing, with planchelte, of scraps from the Chamon de- 
Roland, by a person who had never consciously read 
a line of it, and who did not even know what stratum 
of Old French was represented by the fragments. 
Miss X. seems not to know either; for she calls it 
'Proven9ar. Similar instances of memory revived 
are not very uncommon in dreams. Miss X, can con- 
sciously put a group of fanciful characters into the 
crystal, while this is beyond the power of the seer 
known to the writer, who has attempted to perceive 
what a friend is doing at a distance, but with no 
success. Thus she tried to discover what the writer 
might be about, and secured a view of two lai^e 
sunny rooms, with a shadowy figure therein. Now 
it is very probable that the writer was in just such 

a room, at Castle, but the seer saw, on the 

library table, a singular mirror, which did not exist 
there, and a model of a castle, also non-existent. The 
knowledge that the person sought for was staying 
at a 'castle,' may have unconsciously suggested this 
model in the picture. 

A pretty case of revived memory is given by 
Miss X. She wanted the date of Ptolemy Phila- 



220 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

delphus. Later, in the crystal, she saw a conven- 
tional old Jew, writing in a book with massive 
clasps. Using a mapiifying glass, she found that 
he was writing Greek, but the lines faded, and 
she only saw the Roman numerals LXX. These 
suggested the seventy Hebrews who wrote the 
Septuagint, with the date, 277 ex., which served for 
Ptolemy Philadelphus. Miss X. later remembered 
a mcmoria iechnica which she had once learned, with 
the clue, ' Now Jewish elders indite a Greek copy '. 
It is obvious that these queer symbolical reawaken- 
ings of memory explain much of the (apparently) 
' unknown ' information given by ' ghosts,' and in 
dreams. A lady, who had long been in very bad 
health, was one evening seized by a violent recrudes- 
cence of memory, and for hours poured out the 
minutest details of the most trivial occurrences; the 
attack was followed by a cerebral malady from which 
she fortunately recovered. The same phenomenon 
of awakened memory has occasionally been reported 
by people who were with difficulty restored after 
being seven-eighths drowned. 

The crystal ball, in the proper hands, merely 
illustrates the possibility of artificially reviving 
memory, while the fanciful visions, akin to illusions 
hypnagogiques, have, in all ages, been interpreted by 
superstition as revelations of the distant or the 
future. Of course, if there is such a thing as 
occasional transference of thought, so that the idea 
in the inquirer's mind is reflected in the crystal- 
gazer's vision, the hypothesis of the superstitious 
will fix on this as a miracle, still more will that 



SCRYING OR CRYSTAL-GAZING. 

hypothesis be strengthened, if future or distant 
events, not consciously known, are beheld. Such 
things must occasionally occur, by chance, in the 
myriad confusions of dreams, and, to the same extent, 
in crystal visions. Miss X.'s three cases of possible 
telepathy in her own experience are trivial, and do 
not seem to rise beyond the possibility of fortuitous 
coincidence : and her possible clairvoyant visions 
she leaves to the judgment of the reader, 'to in- 
terpret as clairvoyance, or coincidence, or prevision, 
or whatever else he will '. The crystal-gazer known 
to the author once managed to see the person (un- 
known to her) who was in the mind of the other party 
in the experiment. But she has made scarcely any 
experiments of this description. 

The inferences to be drawn from crystal-gazing 
are not unimportant. First, we note that the 
practice is verj' ancient and widely diffused, among 
civilised and uncivilised people. In this diffusion 
it answers to the other practices, the magical rites 
of Australian blacks, Greeks, Eskimo; to the stories 
of 'death-bed wraiths,' of rappings, and so forth. 
Now this uniformity, as far as regards the latter 
phenomena, may be explained by transmission of 
ideas, or by the uniformity of human nature, while 
the phenomena themselves may be mere inventions 
like other myths. In the case of crystal-gazing, 
however, we can scarcely push scepticism so far as 
to deny that the facts exist, that hallucinations are 
actually provoked. The inference is that a presump- 
tion is raised in favour of the actuality of the other 
phenomena universally reported. They, too, may con- 



222 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

ceivably be hallucinatory; the rappings and 'haunting' 
noises may be auditory, as the crystal visions are 
ocular hallucinations. The sounds so widely attested 
may not cause vibrations in the air, just as the 
visions are not really in the crystal ball. As the 
unconscious self suggests the pictures in the ball, so 
it may suggest the unexplained noises. But while, 
as a rule, only one gazer sees the visions, the sounds 
(usually but not invariably) are heard by all present. 
On the whole, the one case wherein we find facts, 
if only facts of hallucination, at the bottom of the 
belief in a world-wide and world-old practice, rather 
tends in the direction of behef in the other facts, not 
less universally alleged. We know too much about 
mythology to agree with Dr. Johnson, in holding 
that 'a belief, which prevails as far as human nature 
is diffused, could become universal only by its truth,' 
that 'those who never heard of one another would 
not have agreed in a tale which nothing but experi- 
ence could make credible'. But, on the other 
hand, a belief is not necessarily untrue, because it is 
universally diffused. 

In the second place, crystal-gazing shows how a 
substratum of fact may be so overlaid with mystic 
mummeries, incantations, fumigations, pentacles; and 
so overwhelmed in superstitious interpretations, in- 
troducing fairies and spirits, that the facts run the 
risk of being swept away in the litter and dust of 
nonsense. Science has hardly thought crystal-gazing 
WMlhy even of contempt, yet it appears to deserve 
the notice of psychologists. To persons who can 
' aery,' and who do not see hideous illusions, or 



SCRVING OK CRYSTAL-G-4J:1N'G. 

become hypnotised, or superstitious, or incur head- 
aches, scrying is a harmless gateway into Les Para- 
dis Artificiek. 'And the rest, they may live and 
leam." ' 

Avery few experiments will show people whether 
they are scryers, or not. The phenomena, it seems, 
are usually preceded by a mistiness, or milkiness, of 
the glass: this clears off, and pictures appear. 
Even the best scryers often fail to see anything in 
the crystal which maintains its natural ' diapha- 
neity,' as Dr. Dee says. Thus the conditions under 
which the scryer can scry, are, as yet, unascertained. 

The phenomena of scrying were not unknown to 
Dr. Gregorj', Professor of Chemistry in the Univer- 
sity of Edinburgh. Dr. Gregoiy believed in 'odylic 
fluid' on the evidence of Reichenbach's experiments, 
which nobody seems to have repeated successfully 
under strict tests. Clairvoyance also was part of 
Dr. Gregory's faith, and, to be fair, phenomena were 
exhibited at his house, in the presence of a learned 
and distinguished witness known to the writer, which 
could only be accounted for either by thought trans- 
ference, or by an almost, or quite incredible com- 
bination of astuteness, and imposture on the side of 
Dr. Gregory himself. In presence of the clairvoyante 
the nobleman of whom we speak thought not of his 
own house, but of a room in the house of a friend. 
It possessed a very singular feature which it is 

t The accomplished sccyei can see as well in a crystal Tmgstone, 
or in a glass of water, as in a big ccysta! ball. The latter may 
really be dangerous, if left on a cloth in the sun it may set the 
cloth on fite. 



224 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 



needless to describe here, but which was entirely out 
of the experience of the clairvoyantc. She described 
it, however, expressing astonishment at what she 
'saw'. This, unless Dr. Gregory guessed what was 
likely to be thought of, and was guilty of collusion, 
can only be explained by thought transference. In 
other cases the doctor was convinced that he had 
evidence of actual clairvoyance, and it is difficult to 
estimate the amount of evidence which will clear 
such a belief of the charge of credulity. As to 
'scrying' the doctor thought it could be done in 
' mesmerised water,' water bewitched. There is no 
reason to imagine that ' mesmerised ' is different 
from ordinary water,' He knew that folk-lore re- 
tained the belief in scrying in crystal balls, and added 
some superfluous magical incantations. The doctor 
himself was lucky enough to buy an old magical 
crystal in which some boys, after long staring, saw 
persons unknown to themselves, but known to the 
professor, and also persons known to neither. A 
little girl, casually picking up a crystal ball, cried, 
' There's a ship in it, with its cloth all in rags. 
Now it tumbles down, and a woman is working at it, 
and holds her head in her hand.' This is a very 
fair example of a crystal fancy picture. The child's 
mother, not having heard what the child said, saw 
the same vision (p. 165). But this is a story at 
third hand. The doctor has a number of cases, 
and held that crystal possesses an 'odylic' quality. 
But a ball of glass serves just as well as a ball of 
crj'stal, and is much less expensive. 

' Animal Magnetism, second Edition, p. 135. 



J 



SCRYING OR CRYSTAL-GAZING. 225 

Children are naturally visionaries, and, as such, 
are good subjects for experiment. But it may be a 
cruel, and is a most injudicious thing, to set children 
a-scrying. Superstition may be excited, or the half- 
conscious tendency to deceive may be put in motion. 

Socrates and Joan of Arc were visionaries as 
children. Had Joan's ears been soundly boxed, as 
Robert de Baudricourt advised, France might now 
be an English province. But they were not boxed, 
happily for mankind. Certainly much that is 
curious may be learned by any one who, having 
the confidence of a child, will listen to his, or 
her, accounts of spontaneous visions. The writer, 
as a boy, knew a child who used to lie prone on 
the grass watching fairies at play in the miniature 
forest of blades and leaves, This child had a favour- 
ite familiar whom he described freely, but as his 
remarks were received with good-humoured scepti- 
cism, no harm came to him. He would have made 
a splendid scryer, still, ' I speak of him but brotherly,' 
his revelations would have been taken with the largest 
allowances. If scrying, on examination, proves to be 
of real psychological interest, science will owe another 
debt to folk-lore, to the folk who kept alive a practice 
which common-sense would not deign even to ex- 
amine. 



THE SECOND SIGHT. 



Thf Gillit and the fire-raising. Survival of btlief , 

sight. Belief in ancient Greece and etsewhtre. Examples 
in Lapland. Early ei'idence as to S<olch second sigAt. 
Witches burned for this gift. Examples among tfu 
Covenanting Ministers. Early investigations by English 
authors .- Pepys, Aubrey, Boyle, Dicky Steele, De Foe, 
Martin, Kirk, Fraur, Dr. Johnson. Theory of visions 
as caused by Fairies. Modem example of Miss JJ. 
Theory of Eraser of Tiree (1700). * Revived impressions 
of sense.' Examples. Agency of Angels. Martin. 
MoJern cases. Bodily condition of the seer. Not 
epileptic. Tlu second-sighted Minister. The visionary 
Beadle. Transference of vision by touch. Conclusion. 

Some years ago, the author was fishing in a river of 
Inverness-shire. He drove to the stream, picked up 
an old gillie named Campbell, and then went on 
towards the spot where he meant to begin angling. 
A sheep that lay on the road jumped up suddenly, 
almost under the horse's feet, the horse shied, and 
knocked the dogcart against a wall. On the home- 
ward way we observed a house burning, opposite the 
place where the horse shied, and found that a farmer 
had been evicted, and his cottage set on fire. This 
unhappy person, it seems, was in debt to all his 
tradesmen, not to his landlord only. The fire-raising, 
however, was an exxessively barbaric method of 



THE SECOND SIGHT. 22? 

gettinK him to leave the parish, and the view justi- 
fied the indignation of the gillie. The old gillie, 
much excited, declared that the horse had foreseen 
this event in the morning, and had, consequently, 
shied. In a more sceptical spirit the author reminded 
Campbell of the sheep which started up. 'That 
sheep was the devil,' Campbell explained, nor could 
this rational belief of his he shaken. The affair led 
to a conversation on the second sight, and Campbell 
said, ' he had it not.' ' but his sister (or sister-in-law) 
had it '. 

Campbell was a very agreeable companion, in- 
terested in old events, and a sympathiser, as he said, 
in spite of his name, with the great Montrose. His 
remarks led the author to infer that, contrary to what 
some inquirers wrote in the last, and Graham Dalyell 
in the present century, the belief in the second sight 
is still quite common in the Highlands. As will be 
shown later, this inference was correct. 

We must not, from this survival only, draw the 
conclusion that the Highlanders are more supersti- 
tious than many educated people south of the High- 
land line. Second sight is only a Scotch name 
which covers many cases called telepathy and 
clairvoyance by psychical students, and casual or 
morbid hallucinations by other people. In second 
sight the percipient beholds events occurring at a 
distance, sees people whom he never saw with the 
bodily eye, and who afterwards arrive in his neigh- 
bourhood; or foresees events approaching but still 
remote in time. The chief peculiarity of second 
sight is, that the visions often, though not always, 



226 COCK LANE AND COMMQN-SENSE. 

are of a symbolical character. A shroud is observed' 
around the living man who is doomed : boding 
animals, mostly black dogs, vex the seer ; funerals are 
witnessed before ihey occur, and 'corpse-candles' 
(some sort of lightl are watched flitting above thi 
road whereby a burial procession is to take its way.' 
Though we most frequently hear the term ' seconi 
sight ' applied as a phrase of Scotch superstitionj 
the belief in this kind of ominous illusion is obviousl; 
universal. Theoclymenus, in the Odyssey, a prophet 
by descent, and of the same clan as the soothsayer 
Melampus, beholds the bodies and faces of the doomed 
wooers, ' shrouded in night *. The Pythia at Delphi 
announced a similar symbolic vision of blood-dripping 
walls to the Athenians, during the Persian War, 
Again, symbolic visions, especially of blood-drippinj 
walls, is so common in the Icelandic sagas that thi 
reader need only be referred to the prodigies befoi 
the burning of Njal, in the Saga of Bimtt NjaL 
Second sight was as popular a belief among thi 
Vikings as among the Highlanders who retain 
large share of their blood. It may be argued b' 
students who believe in the borrowing rather than 
the independent evolution of ideas, that the Gaelii 
second sight is a direct inheritance from the Northi 
men, who have left so many Scandinavian Iocs 
names in the isles and along the coasts. 

'Thus an educated gentleman, a Highlander, tells theaulhoi tha^ 
he once saw a light of thia kind ■ not a meteor,' passing in air along 4 
road where a funeral went soon afterwards. His compa 
see nothing, but one of them said: ' It will be a death -candle', 
eeecns to have been hallucinatory, otherwise all would have shan 
the experience. 



■e 

i 



THE SECOND SIGHT. 



229 



However this may be, the Highland second sight 
is different, in many points, from the clairvoyance 
and magic of the Lapps, those famous sorcerers. 
On this matter the History of Lapland, by Scheffer, 
Professor of Law in Upsala, is generally cited {Ox- 
ford, 1674)- ' When the devil takes a liking to any 
person in his infancy,' says Scheffer, ' he presently 
seizes on him by a disease, in which he haunts him 
with several apparitions.' This answers, in magical 
education, to Smalls, or Little Go. 

Some Lapps advance to a kind of mystic Modera- 
t;ons, and the great sorcerers attain to Final Schools, 
and are Bachelors in Black Arts. ' They become so 
knowing that, without the drum they can see things 
a( the greatest distances ; and are so possessed by the 
devil that they see things even against their wilK' 
The ' drum ' is a piece of hollow wood covered with 
a skin, on which rude pictures are drawn. An index 
is laid on the skin, the drum is tapped, and omens 
are taken from the picture on which the index happens 
to rest. But this practice has nothing to do with 
clairvoyance. In Scheffer's account of Lapp seers 
we recognise the usual hysterical or epileptic lads, 
who, in various societies become saints, mediums, 
warlocks, or conjurers. But Scheffer shows that the 
Lapp experts try, voluntarily, to see sights, whereas, 
except when WTapped in a bull's hide of old, or 
cowering in a boiler at the present day, the High- 
land second-sighted man lets his visions come to him 
spontaneously and uninvoked. Scheffer wished to 
take a magical drum from a Lapp, who confessed 
with tears, that, drum or no drum, he would still see 



teiuft 



230 



COCK LANB AND COMMON-SENSE. 



visions, as lie proved by giving Scheffer a minute 
relation ' of whatever particulars had happened to 
me in my journey to Lapland. And he further com- 
plained, that he knew not how to make use of his eyes, 
since things altogether distant were presented to 
them.' When a wizard is consulted he dances round 
till he falls, lies on the ground as if dead, and, finally, 
rises and declares the result of his clairvoyance. His 
body is guarded by his friends, and no living thing is 
allowed to touch it. Tornaeus was told many details 
of his journey by^ a Lapp, ' which, although it was 
true, Tornaeus dissembled to him, lest he might 
glory too much in his devilish practices'. Olaus 
Magnus gives a similar account. The whole per- 
formance, except that the seer is not bound, resembles 
the Eskimo ' sleep of the shadow,' more than 
ordinary Highland second sight. The soul of the 
seer is understood to be wandering away, released 
from his body. 

The belief in clairvoyance, in the power of seeing 
what is distant, and foreseeing what is in the future, 
obviously and undeniably occurs everywhere, in 
ancient Israel, as in Mexico before the Spanish 
Conquest, and among the Red Indian tribes as 
among the Zulus. It is more probable that similar 
hallucinatory experiences, morbid, or feigned, or 
natural, have produced the same beliefs eveiywhere, 
than that the beliefs were evolved only by 'Aryans,' 
— Greeks or Scandinavians — and by them diffused 
all over the world, to Zulus, Lapps, Indians of 
Guiana, Maoris. 

One of the earliest references to Scotch second 



THE SECOND SIGHT. 

sight is quoted by Graham Dalyell from Higden's 
Polychronicon (i. Ixiv.)-^ 'There oft by daye tyme, men 
of that islonde seen men that bey dede to fore honde, 
byheded' {like Argyll, in 1661), 'or ho!e, and what 
dethe they deyde. Alyens setten theyr feet upon 
feet of the men of that ionde, for to see such syghtes 
as the men of that Ionde doon.' This method of 
communicating the hallucination by touch is de- 
scribed in the later books, such as Kirk's Secret 
Commotiwealtk (1691), and Mr. Napier, in his Folk- 
lore, mentions the practice as surviving in the 
present century. From some records of the Orkneys, 
Mr. Dalyell produces a trial for witchcraft on Oct. 
2, 1616,* This case included second sight. The 
husband of Jonka Dyneis being in a fishing*boat 
at Walls, six miles from her residence at Aith, 
and in peril, she was 'fund and sein standing at hir 
awin hous wall, in ane trans, that same hour he was 
in danger; and being trappit, she could not give 
answer, bot stude as bereft of hir senssis : and quhen 
she was speirit at quhy she wes so movit, she 
answerit, " Gif our boit be not tynt, she is in great 
hazard," — and wes tryit so to be". 

Elspeth Keoch, in 1616, was tried as a witch for 
a simple piece of clairvoyance, or of charlatanism, 
as we may choose to believe. The offence is styled 
' secund sichl ' in the official report. Again, Issobell 
Sinclair, in 1633, was accused, almost in modem 
spiritualistic phrase, of ' bein controlled with the 
phairie, and that be ihame, shoe hath the second 

' Darkir Superstitions uf Scotland, p. 4H1, Edinburgh, 1834. 

'Op.eii..p. 473. 



COCK UNH AND COMMON-SENSE. 

sight'.' Here, then, we find it officially recorded that 
the second-sighted person is entranced, and more or 
less unconscious of the outer world, at the moment 
of the vision. Something like h petit mat, in epilepsy, 
seems to be intended, the patient "stude as bereft of 
hir senssis '.^ Again, we have the official CNplanation 
of the second sight, and that is the spiritualistic ex- 
planation. The seer has a fairy 'control'. This 
mode of accounting for what 'gentle King Jamie' 
calls ' a sooth dreame, since they see it walking," 
inspires the whole theory of Kirk (1691), but he sees 
no harm either in ' the phairie,' or in the persons 
whom the fairies control. In Kirk's own time we 
shall find another minister, Frazer of Tiree, explain- 
ing the visions as 'revived impressions of sense' 
(1705), and rejecting various superstitious hypotheses. 
The detestable cruelty of the ministers who urged 
magistrates to burn second-sighted people, and the 
discomfort and horror of the hallucinations them- 
selves, combined to make patients try to free them- 
selves from the involuntary experience. As a cor- 
respondent of Aubrey's says, towards the end of the 
sixteenth century : ' It is a thing very troublesome to 
them that have it, and would gladly be rid of it . , . 
they are seen to sweat and tremble, and shreek at 
the apparition',* ' They are troubled for having it, 
judging it a sin,' and they used to apply to the 
presbytery for public prayers and sermons. Others 

1 Op. cil., p. 470. 
^ It is. jierhapH, needletis to : 
enecuted. 

' MUcdhiiiici, 1H57, p. 184. 



d thai the unhappy patici 



THE SECOND SIGHT. 

protested that it was a harmless accident, tried to 
teach it, and endeavoured to communicate the 
visions by touch. 

As usual among the Presbyterians a minister 
might haveabnormal accomplishments, work miracles 
of healing, see and converse with the devil, shine in 
a refulgence of 'odic' light, or be second -sighted. 
But, if a layman encroached on these privileges, he 
was in danger of the tar-barrel, and was prosecuted. 
On the day of the battle of Bothwell Brig. Mr. 
Cameron, minister of Locliend, in remote Kintyre, 
had a clairvoyant view of the fight. ' I see them 
(the Whigs) flying as clearly as I see the wall,' and, 
as near as could be calculated, the Covenanters ran 
at that very moment.' How Mr. Cameron came to 
be thought a saint, while Jonka Dyneis was burned 
as a sinner, for precisely similar experiences, is a 
question hard to answer. But Joan of Arc, the 
saviour of France, was burned for hearing voices, 
while St. Joseph of Cupertino, in spite of his flights 
in the air, was caftonised. Minister or medium, saint 
or sorcerer, it was all a question of the point of 
view. As to Cameron's and Jonka's visions of 
distant contemporary events, they correspond to what 
is told of Apollonius of Tyana, that, at Ephesus, he 
saw and applauded the murder of Domitian at Rome ; 
that one Cornelius, in Padua, saw C^sar triumph 
at Pharsalia ; that a maniac in Gascony beheld 
Coligny murdered in Paris.' In the whole belief 

' Wodiuw, i. 44. 

Mu/xt G<r/(iKJ, XV. 18. Dill Cassius. lib. Ixvii. CV.i/t/. Dt !.l 
Hayne dc Diablt, cited by Ualjell. 



234 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

there is nothing peculiarly Scotch or Celtic, and Wod- 
row gives examples among the Dutch. 

Second Sight, in the days of James VI. had been 
a burning matter. After the Restoration, a habit o 
jesting at everything of the kind came in, on one 
hand ; on the other, a desire to investigate and probe 
the stories of Scotch clairvoyance. Many fellows of 
the Royal Society, and learned men, like Robert 
Boyle, Henry More, Glanvitl, Pepys, Aubrey, and 
others, wrote eagerly to correspondents in the High- 
lands, while Sacheverell and Waldron discussed the 
topic as regarded the Isle of Man. Then came 
special writers on the theme, as Aubrey, Kirk, Fra^er, 
Martin, De Foe (who compiled a catch-penny treatise 
on Duncan Campbell, a Highland fortune-teller in 
London), Theophilus Insulanus (who was urged to 
his task by Sir Richard Steele), Wodrow, a great 
ghost-hunter: and so we reach Dr. Johnson, who 
was 'willing to be convinced,' but was not under 
conviction. In answer to queries circulated for 
Aubiey, he learned that 'the godly' have not the 
faculty, but ' the virtuous ' may have it. But 
Wodrow's saint who saw Bothweli Brig, and another 
very savoury Christian who saw Dundee slain at 
Killiecrankie, may surely be counted among ' the 
godly'. There was difference of opinion as to the 
hereditary character of the complaint. A corre- 
spondent of Aubrey's vouches for a second-sighted 
man who babbled too much 'about the phairie,' and 
* was suddenly removed to the farther end of the house, 
and was there almost strangled'.' This implies that 



THE SECOND SIGHT. 

spirits or ' Phairies ' lifted him, as they did to a seer 
spoken of by Kirk, and do to the tribal medicine-men 
of the Australians, and of course, to ' mediums'. 

Contemporary with Aubrey was the Rev. Robert 
Kirk of Aberfoyle, a Celtic scholar who translated 
the Bible into Gaelic. In 1691 he finished his Secret 
Commonwealth of Elves, Fauncs and Fairies, whereof 
only a fragment has reached us. It has been main- 
tained that the book was printed in i6gi, but no 
mortal eye has seen a copy. In 1815 Sir Walter 
Scott printed a hundred copies from a manuscript in 
the Advocates' Library in lidinburgh. He did liot 
put his name on the book, but Charles Kirkpatrick 
Sharpe, in a note on his own copy, affirms that Sir 
Walter was the editor.' Another edition was edited, 
for Mr. Nutt, by the present writer, in 1893. In the 
year following the completion of his book Mr. Kirk 
died, or, as local tradition avers, was carried away to 
fairyland. 

Mr. Kirk has none of the Presbyterian abhorrence 
of fairies and fauns, though, like the accusers 
the Orkney witches, he believes that ' phairie con- 
trol ' inspires the second-sighted men, who see them 
eat at funerals. The seers were wont to observe 
doubles of living people, and these doubles are ex- 
plained as ' co-walkers ' from the fairy world. This 
'co-walker' ' wes also often seen of old to enter a 
hous, by which the people knew that the person of 
that liknes wes to visite them within a few days'. 

Now this belief is probably founded on actual 

I'A copy picBcnied by Scolt to Sir Alexander Bosweil of Auchin- 
Icck is in the author's posBCsaion ; it bcacE Scoti's autograph. 



ce / 

of / 



236 COCK LANS AND COMMON-SBNSE. 

hallucinatory experience, of which we may give a 
modern example. In the eariyspring of i8go, alady, 
known to the author, saw the ' copy, echo, or Hv- 
ing picture,' of a stranger, who intended (unknown 
to her) to visit her house, but who did not carry out 
his intention. The author can vouch for her perfect 
integrity, and freedom both from superstition, and 
from illusions, except in this case. Miss H. hves in 
Edinburgh, and takes in young men as boarders. At 
the time of this event, She had four such inmates. 
Two, as she believed, were in their study on the 
second floor ; two were in the drawing-room on the 
first floor, where she herself was sitting. The hour 
was seven o'clock in the evening, and the lamp on 
the stair was lit. Miss H. left the drawing-room, 
and went into a cupboard on the lauding, immediately 
above the lamp. She saw a young gentleman, of 
fair complexion, in a suit of dark blue, coming down 
the staircase from the second floor. Supposing him 
to be a friend of her boarders whose study was on 
that floor, she came out of the cupboard, closed the 
door to let him pass, and made him a slight how. 
She did not hear him go out, nor did the maid who 
was standing near the street door. She did not see 
her two friends of the upstairs study till nine o'clock ; 
they had been at a lecture. When they met, she 
said: ' Did you take your friend with you ? ' 

' What friend ? ' 

'The fair young man who left your rooms at 
seven.' 

' We were out before seven, we don't know whom 
you mean.' 



THE SECOND SIGHT. 

The mystery of the young man, who could not 
have entered the house without ringing, was unsolved. 
Ne.\t day a lady living exactly opposite Miss H.'s 
house, asked that lady if she could give hospitality 
to a young man who was coming to Edinburgh from 
the country. Miss H. assented, and prepared a room, 
but the visitor, she was informed, went to stay with a 
relation of his own. Two days later Miss H. was look- 
ing out of her dining-room window after lancheon. 

' Why, there's my ghost ! ' she exclaimed, and 
her friends, running to the window, allowed that he 
answered to the description. The ' ghost ' went into 
the house of Miss H.'s friend on the other side of the 
street, and Miss H., with natural curiosity, sallied 
out, and asked who he was. He was the young man 
for whom she had prepared a room. During his 
absence in the country, his 'co-walker' had visited 
the house at which he intended to stay! 

Coincidences of this kind, then, gave rise to the 
belief in this branch of second sight. 

Though fairies are the ' phantasmogenetic agencies ' 
in second sight, a man may acquire the art by magic. 
A hair rope which has bound a corpse to a bier is 
wound about him, and then he looks backward 
'through his legs' til! he sees a funeral. The 
vision of a seer can be communicated to any one 
who puts his left foot under the wizard's right foot. 

This is still practised in some parts of the High- 
lands, as we shall see, but, near Inverness, the 
custom only survives in the memory of some old 
people.' Mr. Kirk's wizards defended the lawfulness 
* Information from Mi. Mackay, Craigmonie. 



238 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

of their clairvoyance by the example of Rlisha 
seeing Gehazi at a distance.' The second sight was 
hereditary in some families : this is no longer 
thought to be the case. Kirk gives some examples 
of clairvoyance, and prescience: he then quotes 
and criticises Lord Tarbatt's letters to Robert 
Boyle. Second sight ' is a trouble to most of them, 
and they would be rid of it at any rate, if they could *. 
One of our own informants says that the modern 
seers are anxious when they feel the vision begin- 
ning; they do not, however, regard the power as 
unholy or disreputable. Another informant mentions 
a belief that children born between midnight and 
one o'clock will be second-sighted. People attempt 
to hasten or delay the birth, so as to avoid the 
witching hour ; clearly then they regard the second 
sight as an unenviable accomplishment. ' It is 
certane ' says Kirk, ' he sie more fatall and fearfull 
things, than he do gladsome-' For the physical 
condition of the seer. Kirk describes it as 'a rapture, 
transport, and sort of death '. Our contemporary 
informants deny that, in their experience, any kind 
of convulsion or fit accompanies the visions, as in 
Scott's account of Allan Macauiay, in the Legend of 
Montrose. 

Strangely unlike Mr. Kirk, in style and mode of 
thought, is his contemporary, the Rev. Mr. Frazer of 
Tiree and Coll ; Dean of the Isles. We cannot call a 
clergyman superstitious because, 200 years ago, he 
believed in good and bad angels. Save for this 
element in his creed, Mr. Frazer may be called 

2 Kings, V. 25. 



THE SECOND SIGHT. 239 

Strictly and unexpectedly scientific. He was born 
in Muli in 1647, being the son of the Rev. Farquhard 
Frazer, a cadet of the house of Lovat. The father was 
one of the first Mastersof Arts who ever held the living 
of Coll and Tiree : in his time only three landed 
gentlemen of the McLeans could read and write. The 
son, John, was educated at Glasgow University, and 
succeeded to his father's charge, converting the 
lairds and others ' to the true Protestant faith ' (1680}. 
At the Revolution, or later, being an Episcopalian 
and Jacobite, he was deprived of his stipend, but 
was not superseded, and continued the exercise of 
his ministry till his death in 1702. Being in 
Edinburgh in 1700, he met Andrew Symson, a 
relation of his wife : they fell into discourse on the 
second sight, and he sent his little manuscript to 
Symson who published it in 1707. There is an 
Edinburgh reprint, by Webster, in 1820. The work 
is dedicated to Lord Cromartie, the Lord Tarbatt 
of Kirk's book, and the correspondent of Pepys. 
Symson adds a preface, apologising for Mr. Frazer's 
lack of books and learned society, and giving an 
example of transference of second sight : the seer 
placed his foot on that of the person interested, who 
then saw a ship labouring in a storm. The talc was 
not at first hand- 
Mr. Frazer, in his tractate, first deals with the 
question of fact, of the hallucinations called second 
sight: 'That such representations are made to the 
eyes of men and women, is to me out of all doubt, 
and that affects follow answerable thereto, as little 
questionable'. But many doubt as to the question of 



240 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 



fact, 'wherefore so little has been written about if. 
Four or five instances, he thinks, will suffice, i, A 
servant of his left a barn where he slept, ' because 
nightly he had seen a dead corps in his winding 
sheet, straigh ted beside him'. In about half a year 
a 3'oung man died and was buried in the barn. 2. Mr. 
Frazer went to stay in Muli with Sir William 
Sacheverell, who wrote on second sight in the Isle 
of Man, and was then engaged in trying to recover 
treasures from the vessel of the Armada sunk in 
Tobermory Bay. The Duke of Argyll has a cannon 
taken from Francis I. at Pavia, which was raised 
from this vessel, and, lately, the fluke of a ship's 
anchor brought up a doubloon. But the treasure 
still lies in Tobermory Bay. Mr. Frazer's tale 
merely is that a woman told a sailor to bid him leave 
a certain boy behind. The sailor did not give the 
message, the boy died, and the woman said that she 
had seen the lad ' walking with me in his winding 
sheets, sewed up from top to toe,' that this portent 
never deceived her. 3. A funeral was seen by Duncan 
Campbell, in Kintyre, he soon found himself at the 
real funeral. 

4. John Macdonald saw a sea-captain all wet, who 
was drowned, ' about a year thereafter'. The seer 
' was none of the strictest life '. 5. A man in Eigg 
foretold an invasion and calamities. The vision was 
fulfilled by a landing of Enghsh forces in 1689, when 
Mr. Frazer himself was a prisoner of Captain Pottin- 
ger's, in Eigg. He next mentions an old woman 
who, in a syncope or catalepsy, believed she had been 
in heaven. She had a charm of barbarous words, 



THE SECOND SIGHT. 34I 

whereby she could see the answers to questions ' in 
live images before her eyes, or upon the wall, but 
the images were not tractable (tangible), which she 
found by putting to her hand, but could find nothing'. 
In place of burning this poor crone, Mr. Frazer 
reasoned with her, ' taught her the danger and vanity 
of her practice,' and saw her die peacefully in ex- 
treme old age. 

Seeking for an explanation Mr. Frazer gives a 
thoroughly modern doctrine of visual and auditory 
hallucinations, as revived impressions of sense. The 
impressions, ' laid up in the brain, will be reversed 
back to the retiform coat and crystalline humour,' 
hence ' a lively seeing, as if, de novo, the object had 
been placed before the eye'. He illustrates this by 
experiments in after-images. He will not deny, 
however, that angels, good or bad, may intentionally 
cause the revival of impressions, and so, for their 
own purposes, produce the hallucinations from with- 
in. The coincidence of the hallucination with future 
events may arise from the fore -knowledge of the said 
angels, who, if evil, are deceptive, like Ahab's false 
prophets. The angel then, who, through one channel 
or another, fore-knows, or anticipates an event, ' has 
no more to do than to reverse the species of these 
things from a man's brain to the organ of the eye'. 
Substitute telepathy, the effect produced by a dis- 
tant mind, for angels, and we have here the very 
theory of some modern inquirers. Mr, Frazer thinks 
it unlikely that bad angels delude ' several men that 
I have known to be of considerable sense, and pious 
and good conversation '. He will not hear of angels 
16 



242 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 



making bodies of 'compressed air' (an old mystic 
idea), which they place before men's eyes. His own 
hypothesis is more economical of mai^vel. He has 
not observed second sight to be hereditary. If 
asked why it is confined to ignorant islanders, he 
denies the fact. It is as common elsewhere, but is 
concealed, for fear of ridicule and odium. He admits 
that credulity and ignorance give opportunities to 
evil spirits ' to juggle more frequently than otherwise 
they would have done '. So he ' humbly submits 
himself to the judgment of his betters'. Setting 
aside the hypothesis of angels, Mr, Frazer makes 
only one mistake, he does not give inaiantiw con- 
tradictoria, where the hallucination existed without 
the fulfilment. He shows a good deal of reading, and 
a liking for Sir Thomas Browne. The difference 
between him and his contemporary, Mr. Kirk, is as 
great as that between Herodotus and Thucydides. 

Contemporary with Frazer is Martin Martin, 
whose Description of the Western Isles (1703, second 
edition 1716) was a favourite book of Dr. Johnson's, 
and the cause of his voyage to the Hebrides. 
Martin took his M.A. degree at Edinburgh University 
in 1681. He was a curious observer, political and 
social, and an antiquarian. He offers no theory of 
the second sight, and merely recounts the current 
beliefs in the islands. The habit is not, in his 
opinion, hereditary, nor does he think that the 
vision can be communicated by touch, except by one 
to another seer. Where several seers are present, 
all do not necessarily see the vision. 'At the sight 
of a vision, the eyelids of the person are erected, and 



THE SECOND SIGHT. 243 

the eyes continue staring until the object vanish,' 
as Martin knew by observing seers at the moment 
of the experience. Sometimes it was necessary 
to draw down the eyeHds with the fingers. Sickness 
and swooning occasionally accompanied the hallu- 
cination. The visions were usually symbolical, 
shrouds, coffins, funerals. Visitors were seen before 
their arrival. ' I have been seen thus myself by 
seers of both sexes at some 100 miles distance ; some 
that saw me in this manner had never seen me 
personally, and it happened according to their 
visions, without any previous design of mine to go 
to those pSaces, my coming there being purely 
accidental.' Children are subject to the vision, the 
horse of a seer, or the cow a second-sighted woman 
is milking, receives the infection, at the moment 
of a vision, sweats and trembles. Horses are very 
nervous animals, cows not so much so. 

As to objections, the people are very temperate, 
and madness is unknown, hence they are not usually 
visionary. That the learned ' are not able to oblige 
the world with a satisfying account of those visions," 
is no argument against the fact of their occurrence. 
The seers are not malevolent impostors, and there 
are cases of second-sighted folk of birth and edu- 
cation, ' nor can a reasonable man believe that 
children, horses, and cows could be pre-engaged in a 
combination to persuade the world of the reality of 
the second sight '. The gift is not confined to the 
Western Islands, and Martin gives a Dutch example, 
with others from the Isle of Man. His instances 
are of the usual sort, the fulfilment was sometimes 



244 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 



Ions deferred. He mentions a case, but not thatJ 
given by Mr. Frazer, in the Isle of Eigg. Thcfj 
natives had been at Killiecrankie, and one of them 
murdered an EngUsh soldier in Skye, hence thoj 
English invasion of 1689, in which a pretty girl (aag 
had been prophesied by a seer) was brutally ill-1 
treated. The most interesting cases are those in 
which strangers are seen, and peculiarities in their 
dress obsen'ed before their arrival. In the Pirate 
Scott shows how Noma of the Fitful Head mai 
to utter such predictions by aid of early informa-I 
tion; and so, as Cleveland said, 'prophesied oaM 
velvet'. There are a few cases of a brownie beingj 
seen, once by a second-sighted butler, who observed! 
brownie directing a man's game at chess. Martin's* 
book was certainly not calculated to convince Dr,l 
Johnson ; his personal evidence only proves that al 
kind of hallucinatory' trance existed, or was feigned. 

Later than Martin we have the long work ofl 
Theophilus Insulanus, which contains many ' cases,' 
of more or less interest or absurdity. But Theophi-J 
lus is of no service to the framer of philosophical'! 
or physiological theories of the second sight. The- 
Presbyterian clergy generally made war on the belief,,! 
but one of them, as Mrs. Grant reports in her Essays,'- 
had an experience of his own. This good oldl 
pastor's ' daidling bit,' or lounge, was his church- f 
yard. In an October twilight, he saw two small 
lights rise from a spot unmarked by any stone or 
memorial. These ' corpse-candles' crossed the river,j 
stopped at a hamlet, and returned, attended by i 
' i. 25^. Longmans, London, iBii. 



THE SECOND SIGHT. 

larger light. AH three sank into the earth on the 
spot whence the two Hghts had risen. The minister 
threw a few stones on the spot, and next day 
asked the sexton who lay there. The man re- 
membered having buried there two children of a 
blacksmith who lived at the hamlet on the opposite 
side of the water. The blacksmith died next day! 
This did more for second sight, probably, than all 
the minister's sermons could do against the belief. 

As we began by stating, it is a popular supersti- 
tion among the learned that the belief in second sight 
has died out among the Highlanders. Fifty yeare 
ago, Dr. McCuUoch, in his Description of the Western 
Islands, wrote thus : ' Second sight has undergone 
the fate of witchcraft ; ceasing to he believed, it has 
ceased to exist '.' Now. as to whether second si^ht 
exists or not, we may think as we please, but the be- 
lief in second sight is still vivacious in the Highlands, 
and has not altered in a single feature. A well-known 
Highland minister has been kind enough to answer a 
few questions on the belief as it is in his parish. He 
first met a second-sighted man in his own beadle, 
'a most respectable person of entirely blamvless 
life'. After citing a few examples of the beadle's 
successful hits, our informant says; ' He told me that 
he felt the thing coming on, and that it was always 
preceded by a sense of discomfort and anxiety. . , . 
There was no epilepsy, and no convulsion of any 
kind. He felt a sense of great relief when the vision 
had passed away, and he assured me repeatedly that 
the gift was an annoyance rather than a pleasure 

' Tylor, Primitivt Ciillttre, i. 1^3, 



246 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

to him,' as the Lapp also confessed to Schcffer. 
' Others who had the same gift have told me the 
same thing.' Out of seven or eight people liable to 
this malady, or whatever we are to call it, only 
one, we learn, was other than robust, healthy, and 
steady. In two instances the seers were examined 
by a physician of experience, and got clean bills 
of mental and bodily health. An instance is men- 
tioned in which the beadle, alone in a boat with 
a friend, on a salt-water loch, at night, saw a 
vision of a man drowning in a certain pool of a 
certain river. A shepherd's plaid lay on the bank. 
The beadle told his companion what he saw, and 
set his foot on his friend's, who then shared his 
experience. This proves the continuity of the belief 
that the hallucination can be communicated by con- 
tact.' As a matter of evidence, it would have been 
better if the beadle had not first told his friend what 
he saw. Both men told our informant next day, 
and the vision was fulfilled ' scarcely a week after- 
wards '. This vision, granting the honesty of the 
seers, was a case of 'clairvoyance,' but 'symbolical 
hallucinations' frequently occur. In our informant's 
experience the gift is not hereditary. 

On the whole subject Dr. Stewart, of Nether 
Lochaber, wrote several articles in the Iiwertiess 
Courier, during the autumn of 1S93. The Highland 



1 This belief {s not confined to the Highlands. Mr. Podraore 
quotes Ghost 636 in the Psychical Society's coIlectionE ; ' The 
narcator's muthLi is said to havt seen the Figure of a man '. The 
fathei savi nothing till his wife laid her hand on his shaulder, when 
he ejiclaimed, ■ I see him now ' {S. P. li., Nov., 1889, p. 247). 



THE SECOND SIGHT. 

clergy have, doubtless, some difficulty in dealing 
with the belief among their parishioners. But, as 
the possession of the accompHshment is no longer 
regarded as criminal, and as the old theories of dia- 
bolical possession, or fairy inspiration, are not enter- 
tained, at least by the educated, the seers are 
probably to be regarded as merely harmless vision- 
aries. At most we may say, with the poet; — 
Lo, the sublime telepathisc is bete. 

The belief in witchcraft is also as lively in the 
Highlands, as in Devonshire, but, while the law takes 
no cognisance of it, no great harm is done. The 
witchcraft mainly relies on ' sympathetic magic,' on 
perforating a clay image of an enemy with needles and 
so forth. There is a very recent specimen in the Pitt 
Rivera collection, at the museum in Oxfurd. It was 
presented, in a scientific spirit, by the victim, who 
was ' not a penny the worse,' unlike Sir George 
Maxwell of Pollok, two centuries ago. 

Though second sight is so firmly rooted in Celtic 
opinion, the tourist or angler who 'has no Gaelic' 
is not likely to hear much of it. But, when trout 
refuse to rise, and time hangs heavy in a boat on a 
loch, it is a good plan to tell the boatman some 
ghostly Sassenach tales. Then, perhaps, he will cap 
them from his own store, but point-blank questions 
from an inquiring southron are of very little use. 
Nobody likes to be cross-examined on such matters. 
Unluckily the evidence, for facts not for folk-lore, is 
worthless till it has stood the severest cross-exami- 
nation. 



GHOSTS BEFORE THE LAW, 



Sir Walter Seott on rarity of ghostly evidence. Ifis pam- 
phlet for tlie Bannatyne Club. His other examples. 
Case of Mirabel. Tlie spectre, the treasure, the 
deposit repudiated. Trials of Augftier and Mirabel. 
The case of Clenche's murder. The murder of Sergeant 
Davits. Acquittal of the prisoners. An example from 
Aubrey. The'murder of Anne Walker, The cast of 
Mr. Booty. An example from Maryland, the story 
of Briggs and Harris. The Valogm phantasm. Trials 
in the matter of haunted houses. Cases from Le Loyer. 
Modern instances of haunted houses before the law. 
Unsatisfactory results of legal investigations. 

'What I do not know is not knowledge,' Sir Walter 
Scott might have said, with regard to bogles and 
bar-ghaists. His collection at Abbotsford of such 
works as the Ephesian converts burned, is extensive 
and peculiar, while his memory was rich in tradition 
and legend. But as his Major Bellenden sings, 

Was never wight go starkly made, 

But time and years will overthrow. 

When Sir Walter in 1831, wrote a brief essay on 
ghosts before the law, his memorj' was no longer 
the extraordinary engine, wax to receive, and marble 
to retain, that it had been. It is an example of his 
dauntless energy that, even in 1831, he was not only 
toiling at novels, and histories, and reviews, to wipe 



GHOSTS BEFORE THE LAW. 249 

out his debts, but that, as a pure labour of love, he 
edited, for the Bannatyne Club, ' The trial of 
Duncan Terig alias Clerk, and Alexander Bane 
Macdonald, for the murder of Arthur Davis, sergeant 
in General Guise's regiment of foot, June, 1754'. 

The trial, as Sir Walter says, in his dedication 
to the Bannatyne Club, ' involves a curious point of 
evidence,' a piece of 'spectral evidence' as Cotton 
Mather calls it. In another dedication (for there 
are two) Scott addresses Sir Samuel Shepherd, re- 
marking that the tract deals with ' perhaps the only 
subject of legal inquiry which has escaped being 
investigated by his skill, and illustrated by his 
genius '. That point is the amount of credit due to 
the evidence of a ghost. In his preface Sir Walter 
cites the familiar objection of a learned judge that 
'the ghost must be sworn in usual form, but in case 
he does not come forward, he cannot be heard, as 
now proposed, through the medium ' (medium indeed !) 
' of a third party '. It seems to be a rule of evidence 
that what a dead man said may be received, on the 
report of the person with whom he communicated. 
A ghost is a dead man, and yet he is deprived, 
according to the learned judge's ruling, of his privi- 
lege. Scott does not cite the similar legend in 
Hibernian Tales, the chap book quoted by Thackeray 
in his Irish Sketch-book. In that affair, when the 
judge asked the ghost to give his own evidence: 
' Instantly there came a dreadful rumbling noise 
into the court—" Here am I that was murdered by 
the prisoner at the bar " '. The Hibertiinn Tales are 
of no legal authority, nor can we give chapter and 



Z50 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 



verse for another well-known anecdote. A prisoner 
on a charge of murder was about to escape, when 
the court observed him looking suspiciously over his 
shoulder. ' Is there no one present,' the learned 
judge asked in general, 'who can give better 
testimony?' 'My lord,' exclaimed the prisoner, 
' that wound he shows in his chest is twice as big as 
the one I gave him.' In this anecdote, however, 
the prisoner was clearly suffering from a hallucina- 
tion, as the judge detected, and we do not propose 
to consider cases in which phantasms bred of remorse 
drove a guilty man to make confession. 

To return to Scott ; he remarks that believers in 
ghosts must be surprised ' to find how seldom in any 
country an allusion hath been made to such evidence 
in a court of justice '. Scott himself has only 'de- 
tected one or two cases of such apparition evidence,' 
which he gives. Now it is certain, as we shall see, 
that he must have been acquainted with several 
other examples, which did not recur to his memory: 
the memory of 1831 was no longer that of better 
years. Again, there were instances of which he had 
probably never possessed any knowledge, while others 
have occurred since his death. We shall first con- 
sider the cases of spectral evidence (evidence that is 
of a dead man's ghost, not of a mere wraith) recorded 
by Sir Walter, and deal later with those beyond his 
memory or knowledge.' Sir Walter's first instance 



''Spectral evidence' was common in witch trials. Wierua 
(b. 1515) mentions a woman who confessed that she had been at a 
witch's covin, or ' sabbath,' when her body was in bed with her 
husband. If there was any conhrmatory leEtimony, if any one chose 



GHOSTS BEFORE THE LAW. 25I 

is from Causes Celebres, {vol. xii., La Haye, 1749, 
Amsterdam, 1775, p. 247). Unluckily the narrator, 
in this collection, is an esprit fort, and is assiduous 
in attempts to display his wit. We have not a plain 
unvarnished tale, but something more like a facetious 
leading article based on a trial, 

Honor^ Mirabel was a labouring lad, under age, 
near Marseilles. His story was that, in May (year 
not given), about eleven at night, he was lying under 
an almond free, near the farm of a lady named Gay. 
In the moonlight he saw a man at an upper window 
of a building distant five or six paces, the house 
belonged to a Madame Placasse. Mirabel asked the 
person what he was doing there ; got no answer, 
entered, and could see nobody. Rather alarmed he 
went to a well, drew some water, drank, and then 
heard a weak voice, bidding him dig there for treasure, 
and asking that masses might be said for the soul 
of the informant. A stone then fell on a certain spot; 
stone-throwing is a favourite exercise with ghosts 
everywhere. 

With another labourer, one Bernard, Mirabel 
dug, found a packet of dirty linen, and, fearing that 
it might hold the infection of plague, dipped it in 
wine, for lack of vinegar. The parcel contained 
more than a thousand Portuguese gold coins. Ber- 
nard and his mistress were present at the opening 
of the parcel, but Mirabel managed to conceal from 

to say that he saw her at the 'sabbath,' that was 'spectral evidence'. 
This kind of leatimany made it vain far a witch to take Mr. Weller'a 
advice, and plead ' a halibi,' but even Cotton Mather admits that 
' spectral evidence ' is inconctusive. 



** 



252 



COCK LAKE AND COMMON-SENSE. 



them the place where he hid it, not a very likely- 
story. He was grateful enough to pay for the desired 
masses, and he had himself bled four times to relieve 
his agitation, Mirabel now consulted a merchant 
in Marseilles, one Auguier, who advised him to keep 
his old coins a mystery, as to put them into circula- 
tion would lead to inquiry and inconvenience. He 
lent Mirabel some ready money, and, finally, induced 
Mirabel to entrust the Portuguese hoard to his care. 
The money was in two bags, one fastened with gold- 
coloured ribbon, the other with linen thread. Auguier 
gave a receipt, and now we get a datCj Marseilles, 
September 27, 1726. Later Auguier (it seems) tried to 
murder Mirabel, and refused to return the deposit. 
Mirabel went to law with him : Auguier admitted 
that Mirabel had spoken fo him about having found 
a treasure which he would entrust to Auguier, but 
denied the rest. In his house was found a ribbon 
of a golden hue, such as Mirabel used to tie up his bag, 
and a little basket which has no obvious connection 
with the matter. The case was allowed to come on, 
there were sixteen witnesses. A woman named 
Caillot swore to Mirabel's having told her about 
the ghost : she saw the treasure excavated, saw the 
bags, and recognised the ribbon. A man had seen 
Mirabel on his way to give Auguier his bags, and, 
indeed, saw him do so, and receive a piece of paper. 
He also found, next day, a gold coin on the scene 
of the interview. A third witness, a woman, was 
shown the treasure by Mirabel, 

The narrator here makes the important reflection 
that Providence could not allow a ghost to appear 



A 



GHOSTS BEFORE THE LAW. 253 

merel)- to enrich a foolish peasant. But, granting 
ghosts (as the narrator does), we can only say that, 
in ordinaiy life. Providence permits a number of 
undesirable events to occur. Why should the be- 
haviour of ghosts be an exception ? 

Other witnesses swore to corroborating circum- 
stances. Auguier denied everything, experts ad- 
mitted that the receipt was like his writing, but 
declared it to be forged ; the ribbon was explained 
as part of his little daughter's dress. The judge 
decided — no one will guess what —that A uguier should 
be put to the torture ! 

Auguier appealed: his advocate urged the ab- 
surdity of a ghost-story on a priori grounds : if there 
was no ghost, then there was no treasure : if there 
was a treasure, would not the other digger have 
secured his share ? That digger, Bernard, was not 
called. Then Auguier pled an alibi, he was eight 
leagues away when he was said to have received the 
treasure. Why he did not urge this earlier does not 
appear. 

Mirabel's advocate first defended from the Bible 
and the Fathers, the existence of ghosts. The 
Faculty of Theology, in Paris, had vouched for them 
only two years before this case, in 1724. The Sor- 
bonne had been as explicit, in 1518. 'The Parlia- 
ment of Paris often permitted the tenant of a haunted 
house to break his contract.'^ Ghosts or no ghosts, 

'Papon. Arrets., xx. 5, g. Charondas, Lib. viii. Resp. 77. 
Covairuvias, iv. 0. Mornac, s. v., Habitations, 27 ff., Local, and 
Conduct. Other doctors do not deny haunlings, but allege that a 
brave man should disiegiard them, and that they do not fulfil he 



254 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

Mirabel's counsel said, there was a treasure. In his 
receipt Auguier, to deceive a simple peasant, partially 
disguised his hand. Auguier's alibi is worthless, he 
might easily have been at Marseilles and at Pertuis 
on the same day: the distance is eight leagues. 

Bernard was now at last called in ; he admitted 
that Mirabel told him of the ghost, that they dug, 
and found some Hnen, but that he never saw any 
gold. He had carried the money from Mirabel to 
pay for the masses due to the ghost. Mirabel had 
shown him a document, for which he said he had 
paid a crown, and Bernard (who probably could not 
read) believed it to be like Auguier's receipt. Bernard, 
of course, having been denied his share, was not a 
friendly witness. A legal document was put in, 
showing that Madame Placasse (on whose land the 
treasure lay) summoned Mirabel to refund it to her. 
The document was a summons to him. But this 
document was forged, and Mirabel, according to a 
barrister whom he had consulted about it, said it 
was handed to him by a man unknown. Why the 
barrister should have betrayed his client is not clear. 
Mirabel and Marguerite Caillot, his first witness, who 
had deposed to his telling her about the ghost, and 
to seeing the excavation of the packet, were now 
arrested, while Auguier remained in prison. Mar- 
guerite now denied her original deposition, she had 

legal condition, iieltis cadens in constanlem viriim. ThEBC doctors 
may never have seen a ghost, or may have been unusually courage- 
ous. They held that a man might get accustomed to the annoyances 
of bogles, s'apprhoiser avtc citlc fraycufjUkelhe Procter family al 
Willington. 



rfta 



GHOSTS BEFORE THE LAW. 

only spoken to oblige Mirabel. One Etienne Bar- 
th^lemy was next arrested : he admitted that he had 
'financed' Mirabel during the trial, but denied that 
he had suborned any witnesses. Two experts differed, 
as usual, about Auguier's receipt ; a third was called 
in, and then they unanimously decided that it was 
not in his hand. On February 18, 1729, Auguier was 
acquitted, Mirabel was condemned to the torture, 
and to the galley, for life. Marguerite Caillot was 
fined ten francs. Under torture Mirabel accused 
Barth^Iemy of having made him bring his charge 
against Auguier, supplying him with the forged re- 
ceipt and with the sham document, the summons to 
restore the gold to Madame Placasse. Oddly enough 
he still said that he had handed sacks of coin to 
Auguier, and that one of them was tied up with the 
gold-coloured ribbon. Two of his witnesses, under 
torture, stuck to their original statements. They 
were sentenced to be hung up by the armpits, and 
Barthdemy was condemned to the galleys for life. 

It is a singular tale, and shows strange ideas of 
justice. Once condemned to the galleys, Mirabel 
might as well have made a clean breast of it ; but 
this he did not do : he stuck to his bags and gold- 
coloured ribbon. Manifestly Mirabel would have 
had a better chance of being believed in court if he 
had dropped the ghost altogether. It is notable that 
Sir Walter probably gave his version of this affair from 
memory : he says that Mirabel ' was non-suited upon 
the ground that, if his own story was true, the treasure, 
by the ancient laws of France, belonged to the crown *. 

Scott's next case is very uninteresting, at least as 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

far as it is yiven in Howell's State Trials, vol. xii. 
(1692), p. 875. 

A gentleman named Harrison had been accused 
of beguiling a Dr. Clenche into a hackney coach, on 
pretence of taking him to see a patient. There 
were two men in the coach, besides the doctor. 
They sent the coachman on an errand, and when he 
came back he found the men fled and Clenche 
murdered. He had been strangled with a handker- 
chief. On evidence which was chiefly circumstantial, 
Harrison was found guilty, and died protesting his 
innocence. Later a Mrs. Milward declared that her 
husband, before his death, confessed to her that he 
and a man named Cole were the murderers of Dr. 
Clenche. The ghost of her husband persecuted her, 
she said, till Cole was arrested. Mr. Justice Dolben 
asked her in court for the storj-, but feared that the 
jury would laugh at her. She asserted the truth of 
her story, but, if she gave any details, they are not 
reported. Cole was acquitted, and the motives of 
Mrs. Milward remain obscure. 

Coming to the tract which he reprints, Sir Walter 
says that his notice was first drawn to it, in 1792, by 
Robert Mcintosh, Esq,, one of the counsel in the 
case, which was heard in Edinburgh, June 10, 1754. 
Grant of Prestongrange, the Lord Advocate well 
known to readers of Mr. Stevenson's Cairiona, prose- 
cuted Duncan Terig or Clerk, and Alexander Bain 
Macdonald, for the murder of Sergeant Arthur Davies, 
on September 28, 1749. They shot him on Christie 
Hill, at the head of Glenconie. There his body re- 
mained concealed for some time, and was later found 



GHOSTS BEFORE THE LAW. 257 

with a hat marked with his initials, A. R. D, They 
are also charged with taking his watch, two gold 
rings, and a purse of gold, whereby Clerk, previously 
penniless, was enabled to take and stock two farms. 

Donaid Farquharson, in Glendee, deposes that, in 
June, 1750, Alexander Macpherson sent for him, and 
said that he was much troubled by the ghost of the 
Serjeant, who insisted that he should bury his bones, 
and should consult Farquharson. Donald did not 
believe this quite, but trembled lest the ghost should 
vex him. He went with Macpherson, who showed 
the body in a peat-moss. The body was much de- 
cayed, the dress all in tatters. Donald asked Mac- 
pherson whether the apparition denounced the 
murderers : he replied that the ghost said it would 
have done so, had Macpherson not asked the question. 
They buried the body on the spot, Donald attested 
that he had seen the Serjeant's rings on the hand of 
Clerk's wife. For three years the prisoners had been 
suspected by the country side. 

Macpherson declared that he had seen an appari- 
tion of a man in blue, who said, ' I am Serjeant 
Davies,' that he at first took this man for a brother of 
Donald Farquh arson's, that he followed the man, or 
phantasm, to the door, where the spectre repeated its 
assertions, and pointed out the spot where the bones 
lay. He found them, and then went, as already 
shown, to Donald Farquharson. Between the first 
vision and the burying, the ghost came to him naked, 
and this led him to inter the remains. On the second 
appearance, the ghost denounced the prisoners. Mac- 
pherson gave other evidence, not spectral, which i 
17 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

plicated Clert:. But, when asked what language the 
ghost spoke in, he answered, 'as good Gaelic as he 
had ever heard in Lochaber'. ' Pretty well,' said his 
counsel, Scott's informant, Mcintosh, ' for the ghost 
ofan English serjeant.' This was probably conclusive 
with the jury, for they acquitted the prisoners, in the 
face of the other incriminating evidence. This was 
illogical. Modern students of ghosts, of course, would 
not have been staggered by the ghost's command of 
Gaelic: they would explain it as a convenient hal- 
lucinatory impression made by the ghost on the 
mind of the ' percipient'. The old theologians would 
have declared that a good spirit took Davies's form, 
and talked* in the tongue best known to Macpherson. 
Scott's remark is, that Mcintosh's was ' no sound jest, 
for there was nothing more ridiculous in a ghost speak- 
ing a language which he did not understand when 
in the body, than there was in his appearing at all '. 
But jurymen are not logicians. Macpherson added 
that he told his tale to none of the people with him 
in the sheiling, but that Isobel McHardie assured 
him she 'saw such a vision '. Isobel, in whose service 
Macpherson had been, deponed that, while she lay 
at one end of the sheiling and Macpherson at the 
other, 'she saw something naked come in at the door, 
which frighted her so much that she drew the clothes 
over her head '. Next day she asked Macpherson 
what it was, and he replied ' she might be easy, for 
that it would not trouble them any more '. 

The rest of the evidence went very strongly against 
the accused, but the jury unanimously found them 
' Not Guilty '. 



GHOSTS BEFORE THE LAW. 

Scott conjectures that Macphersonknewof the mur- 
der (as indeed he had good reason, if his non-spectral 
evidence is true), hut that he invented the ghost, whose 
commands must be obeyed, that he might escape the 
prejudice entertained by the Celtic race against citi- 
zens who do their duty. Davies, poor fellow, was a 
civil good-humoured man, and dealt leniently (as 
evidence showed) with Highlanders who wore the 
tartan. Their national costume was abolished, as we 
all know, by English law. after the plaid had liber- 
ally displayed itself, six miles south of Derby, in 1743. 

So far it is plain that ' what the ghost said is not 
evidence,' and may even ruin a very fair case, for 
there can be little doubt as to who killed Serjeant 
Davies. But examples which Scott forgot, for of 
course he knew them, prove that, in earlier times, a 
ghost's testimony was not contemned by English law. 
Cases are given, with extracts from documents, in a 
book so familiar to SirWalter as Aubrey's A/[sce//rtHjVs. 
Aubrey (b. 1626, d, 1697) was a F,R.S., and, like 
several other contemporary Fellows of the Royal 
Society, was a keen ghost hunter. He published ' 
'A full and true Relation of the Examination and 
Confession of William Earwick, and Edward Man- 
gall, of two horrid murders'. 

Barwick killed his wife, who was about to bear a 
child, near Cawood in Yorkshire, on April 14, i6go, 
Barwick had intrigued with his wife before marriage, 
and perhaps was ' passing weary of her love '. On 
April 14, Palm Monday, he went to his brother-in- 
law, Thomas Lofthouse, near York, who had married 
' MiieetlaHics, p. 94, London, 1857. 



26o COCK LANE AND COMMON-SBNSE. 

Mrs. Banvick's sister. He informed Lofthouse that 
he had taken Mrs, Barwick, for her confinement, to 
the house of his uncle, Harrison, in Selby, On Sep- 
tember 17, at York assizes, Lofthouse swore that 
on Easter Tuesday (eight days after Palm Monday, 
namely April 22), he was watering a quickset hedge, 
at mid-day, when he saw ' the apparition in the shape 
of a woman walking before him '. She sat down 
opposite the pool whence he drew water, he passed 
her as he went, and, returning with his pail filled, 
saw her again. She was dandling on her lap some 
white object which he had not observed before. He 
emptied his pail, and, 'standing in his yard' looked 
for her again. She was no longer present. She wore 
a brown dress and a white hood, 'such as his wife's 
sister usually wore, and her face looked extream pale, 
her teeth in sight, no gums appearing, her visage 
being like his wife's sister'. 

It certainly seems as if this resemblance was an 
after-thought of Lofthouse's, for he dismissed the 
matter from his mind till prayers, when it 'discom- 
posed his devotions'. He then mentioned the affair 
to his wife, who inferred that her sister had met with 
foul play. On April 23, that is the day after the 
vision, he went to Selby, where Harrison denied all 
knowledge of Mrs. Barwick. On April 24, Lofthouse 
made a deposition to this effect before the mayor of 
York, but, in his published statement of that date, he 
only avers that ' hearing nothing of the said Barwick's 
wife, he imagined Barwick had done her some mis- 
chief. There is not a word hereof the pliant asm 
sworn to by Lofthouse at the assizes on September 17. 



GHOSTS BEFORE THE LAW. 

Nevertheless, on April 24, Barvvick confessed to the 
mayor of York, that ' on Monday was seventh night ' 
(there seems to be an error here) he 'found the con- 
veniency ofapond ' (as Aubrey puts it) 'adjoiningto a 
quickwood hedge," and there drowned the woman, 
and buried her hard by. At the assizes, Barwick 
withdrew his confession, and pleaded ' Not Guilty '. 
Lofthouse, his wife, and a third person swore, how- 
ever, that the dead woman was found buried in her 
clothes by the pond side, and on the prisoner's con- 
fession being read, he was found guilty, and hanged 
in chains. Probably he was guilty, but Aubrey's 
dates are confused, and we are not even sure whether 
there were two ponds, and two quickset hedges, or 
only one of each. Lofthouse may have seen a 
stranger, dressed like his sister-in-law, this may have 
made him reflect on Barwick's tale about taking her 
to Selby ; he visited that town, detected Barwick's 
falsehood, and the terror of that discovery made 
Barwick confess, 

Surtees, in his History of Durham, published 
another tale, which Scott's memory did not retain. 
In 1630, a gfirl named Anne Walker was about 
to have a child by a kinsman, also a Walker, for 
whom she kept house. Walker took her to Dame 
Care, in Chester le Street, whence he and Mark 
Sharp removed her one evening late in November. 
Fourteen days afterwards, late at night, Graime, 
a fuller, who lived six miles from Walker's village, 
Lumley, saw a woman, dishevelled, blood-stained, 
and with five wounds in her head, standing in a 
room in his mill. She said she was Anne Walker, 



COCK LANB AND COMMON-SENSE. 

that Mark Sharp had slain her with a collier s pick, 
and thrown her body into a coal-pit. hiding the 
pick under the bank. After several visitations, 
Graime went with his legend to a magistrate, the 
bod)' and pick-axe were discovered, Walker and 
Sharp were arrested, and tried at Durham, in 
August, 1631. Sharp's boots, all bloody, were found 
where the ghost said he had concealed them 'in a 
stream'; how they remained bloody, if in water, is 
hard to explain. Against Walker there was no 
direct evidence. The prisoners, the judge summing 
up against them, were found guilty and hanged, pro- 
testing their innocence. 

It is suggested that Graime himself was the 
murderer, else, how did he know so much about 
it ? But Walker and Sharp were seen last with 
the woman, and the respectable Walker was not 
without a motive, while, at this distance, we can 
conjecture no motive in the case of Graime.' 
Cockbum's Voyage up the Mediterranean is the 
authority (ii. 35} for a very odd trial in the 
Court of King's Bench, London. The logs of 
three ships, under Captains Barnaby, Bristow and 
Brown, were put in to prove that, on Friday, 
15th May, 1687, these men, with many others, 
were shooting rabbits on Stromboli : that when 
beaters and all were collected, about a quarter 
to four, they all saw a man in grey, and a man 
in black run towards them, the one in grey 

' Hibbert. Philosophy of AffariHons, second edition, p. 224. Hib- 
bert finds Graime gui)^, but only becaase he knew where the body 



GHOSTS BEFORE THE LAW. 

leading, that Barnaby exclaimed, ' The foremost is 
old Booty, my next door neif;hbour,' that the figures 
vanished into the flames of the volcano. This oc- 
currence, by Bamaby's desire, they noted in their 
journals. They were al! making merry, on Octo- 
ber 6, 1687, at Gravesend, when Mrs. Barnaby 
remarked to her husband: 'My dear, old Booty is 
dead! ' The captain replied : ' We all saw him run 
into hell '. Mrs. Booty, hearing of this remark, sued 
Barnaby for libel, putting her damages at ^1000. 
The case came on, the clothes of old Booty were 
shown in court : the date and hour of his death were 
slated, and corresponded, within two minutes, to the 
moment when the mariners beheld the apparition in 
Stromboli, 'so the widow lost her cause'. A 
mediteval legend has been revived in this example. 

All these curious legal cases were, no doubt, 
familiar to Sir Walter Scott. He probably had no 
access to an American example which was reprinted 
four years after his death, by a member of the club 
which he founded, the Bannatyne Club,' in 1836. 

The evidence of the ghost-seer was republished 
by Mrs. Crowe, in her Night Side of Nature. But 
Mrs. Crowe neither gives the facts of the trial 
correctly, nor indicates the sources of the narrative. 
The source was a periodical, The Opera Glass, 
February 3, 1827, thirty years after the date of the 
trial. The document, however, had existed ' for 
many years,' in the possession of the anonymous con- 
tributor to The Opera Glass. He received it from 

' Nolie/s Rtlalive lo the BitnaalyaeCM, 1836, p. 191. Remark- 
itble THal in Maryland. 



E'the counsel in the case, Mr. Nicholson, after- 
wards a judge in Maryland, who compiled it from 
attested notes made by himself in court. 

The suit was that of James, Fanny, Robert, and 
Thomas Harris, devisees of Thomas Harris, v. Mary 
Harris, relict and administratrix of James Harris, 
brother of Thomas, aforesaid (1798-99). Thomas 
Harris had four illegitimate children. He held, as he 
supposed, a piece of land in fee, but, in fact, he was 
only seized in tail. Thus he could not sell or devise 
it, and his brother James was heir in tail, the children 
being bastards. These legal facts were unknown both 
to James and Thomas. Thomas made a will, leaving 
James his executor, and directing that the land should 
be sold, and the money divided among his own chil- 
dren. James, when Thomas died, sold the land, and, 
in drawing the conveyance, it was discovered that 
he had no right to do so for Thomas, as it was 
held by Thomas in tail. James then conveyed his 
right to the purchaser, and kept the money as legal 
heir. Why James could sell, if Thomas could not, 
the present writer is unable to explain. In two 
years, James died intestate, and the children of 
Thomas brought a suit against James's widow. 
Before James's death, the ghost of Thomas had 
appeared frequently to one Briggs, an old soldier 
in the Colonial Revolt, bidding James ' return the 
proceeds of the sale to the orphans' court, and when 
James heard of this from Briggs he did go to the 
orphans' court, and returned himself to the estate of 
his brother, to the amount of the purchase money of 
the land ', 



GHOSTS BEFORE THE LAW. 

Now, before the jurj' were Kworn, the counsel, 
Wright and Nicholson for the plaintiffs, Scott and 
Earle for the defendant, privately ag;reed that the 
money could not be recovered, for excellent legal 
reasons. But they kept this to themselves, and let 
the suit go on, merely for the pleasure of hearing 
Briggs, ' a man of character, of firm, undaunted spirit," ■ 
swear to his ghost in a court of law. He had been 
intimate with Thomas Harris from boyhood. It may 
be said that he invented the ghost, in the interest of 
his friend's children. He certainly mentioned it, 
however, some time before he had any conversation 
with it. 

Briggs's evidence may be condensed very much, as 
the learned Mrs. Crowe quotes it correctly in her 
Night Side of Nature. In March, 1791, about nine A.M., 
Briggs was riding a horse that had belonged to Harris. 
In a lane adjoining the field where Harris was buried, 
the horse shied, looked into the field where the tomb 
was, and ' neighed very loud '. Briggs now saw Harris 
coming through the field, in his usual dress, a blue 
coat. Harris vanished, and the horse went on. As 
Briggs was ploughing, in June, Harris walked by 
him for two hundred yards. A lad named Bailey, 
who came up, made no remark, nor did Harris 
teil him about the hallucination. In August, after 
dark, Harris came and laid his arms on Briggs's 
shoulder. Briggs had already spoken to James 
Harris, ' brither to the corp,' about these and other 
related phenomena, a groan, a smack on the nose 
from a viewless hand, and so forth. In October 
Briggs saw Harris, about twilight in the morning. 



266 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

Later, at eight o'clock in the morning, he was busy 
in the field with Bailey, aforesaid, when Harris 
passed and vanished: Bailey saw nothing. At half- 
past nine, the spectre returned, and leaned on a rail- 
ing: Briggs vainly tried to make Bailey see him. 
Briggs now crossed the fence, and walked some 
hundreds of yards with Harris, telling him that his 
will was disputed. Harris bade Briggs go to his 
aforesaid brother James, and remind him of a con- 
versation they had held, ' on the east side of the 
wheat-stacks," on the day when Harris's fata! illness 
began. James remembered the conversation, and 
said he would fulfil his brother's desire which he 
actually did. There was a later interview between 
Briggs and Harris, the matter then discussed Briggs 
declined to impart to the court, and the court over- 
ruled the question. ' He had never related to any 
person the last conversation, and never would.' 

Bailey was sworn, and deposed that Briggs had 
called his attention to Harris, whom he could not see, 
had climbed the fence, and walked for some distance, 
' apparently in deep conversation with some person. 
Witness saw no one.' 

It is plain that the ghost never really understood 
the legal question at issue. The dates are difficult 
to reconcile. Thomas Harris died in lygo. His 
ghost appeared in 1751. Why was there no trial 
of the case till 'about 1798 or 1799'? Perhaps re- 
search in the Maryland records would elucidate 
these and other questions ; we do but give the tale, 
with such authority as it possesses. Possibly it is 
an elaborate hoax, played off by Nicholson, the 



GHOSTS BEFOHE THE LAW. 

plaintiffs' counsel, on the correspondent of The Opera 
Glass, or by him on the editor of that periodical. 

The hallucinations of Briggs, which were fortu- 
nate enough, it is said, to get into a court of justice, 
singularly resemble those of M. Bezuei, in July and 
August, 1697, though these were not matter of a 
sworn deposition. The evidence is in Histoirc d'une 
Apparition Arrivee a Valogne} The narrator of 1708, 
having heard much talk of the affair, was invited to 
meet Bezuei, a priest, at dinner, January 7, 1708. 
He told his one story ' with much simplicity'. 

In 1695, when about fifteen, Bezuei was a friend 
of a younger boy, one of two brothers, Desfontaines, 
In i6g6, when Desfontaines minor was going to study 
at Caen, he womed Bezuei into signing, in his blood, 
a covenant that the first who died should appear 
to the survivor. The lads corresponded frequently, 
every six weeks. On July 31, 1697, at half-past 
two, Bezuei, who was hay-making, had a fainting fit. 
On August I, at the same hour, he felt faint on a 
road, and rested under a shady tree. On August 2, 
at half-past two, he fainted in a hay-loft, and vaguely 
remembered seeing a half-naked body. He came 
down the ladder, and seated himself on a block, in 
the Place des Capucins. Here he lost sight of his 
companions, but did see Desfontaines, who came 
up, took his left arm, and led him into an alley. The 
servant followed, and told Bezuel's tutor that he was 
talking to himself. The tutor went to him, and 
heard him asking and answering questions. Bezuei, 

' Paris, 1708. Reprinted by I.englcl Dufresnoy, in hia Diatrtn- 
lions lur la Afparitioas. Avignon, 1751, vol. iii. p. 3S. 



268 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 



for three-quarters of an hour, conversed, as he be- 
lieved, with Desfontaines, who said that he had 
been drowned, while bathing, at Caen, about half- 
past two on July 31, The appearance was naked to 
the waist, his head bare, showing his beautiful yellow 
locks. He asked Bezuel to learn a school task that 
had been set him as a penalty, the seven penitential 
psalms: he described a tree at Caen, where he had 
cut some words : two years later Bezuel visited it 
and them; he gave other pieces of information, 
which were verified, but not a word would he say of 
heaven, hell, or purgatory ; ' he seemed not to hear 
my questions'. There were two or three later in- 
terviews, till Bezuel carried out the wishes of the 
phantasm. 

When the spectral Desfontaines went away, on 
the first occasion, Bezuel told another boy that 
Desfontaines was drowned. The lad ran to the 
parents of Desfontaines, who had just received a 
letter to that effect. By some error, the boy thought 
that the elder Desfontaines had perished, and said so 
to Bezuel, who denied it, and, on a second inquiry, 
Bezuel was found to be right. 

The explanation that Bezuel was ill (as he 
certainly was), that he had heard of the death of his 
friend just before his hallucination, and had forgotten 
an impressive piece of news, which, however, caused 
the apparition, is given by the narrator of 1708. 
The kind of illusion in which a man is seen and 
heard to converse with empty air, is common to the 
cases of Bezuel and of Briggs, and the writer is 
acquainted, at first hand, with a modern example. 



GHOSTS BEFORE THE LAW. 

Mrs, Crowe cites, on the authority of the late 
Mr. Maurice Lothian, sohcitor for the plaintiff, a 
suit which arose out of ' hauntings,' and was heard 
in the sheriffs court, at Edinburgh, in 1835-37. 
But we are unable to discover the official records, 
or extracts of evidence from them. This is to be re- 
gretted, but, by way of consolation, we have the 
pleadings on both sides in an ancient French case of a 
haunted house. These are preserved in his Discours 
des Spectres, a closely printed quarto of nearly 1000 
pages, by Pierre le Loyer, Conseiller du Roy au Siege 
Prfesidial d'Angers.' Le Loyer says, ' De gay€t^ de 
coeur semble ra'estre voulu engager au combat contre 
ceux qui impugnent les spectres! ' As Le Loyer ob- 
serves, ghosts seldom come into court in civil cases, 
except when indicted as nuisances, namely, when they 
make a hired house uninhabitable by their frolics. 
Then the tenant often wants to quit the house, and 
to have his contract annulled. The landlord resists, 
an action is brought, and is generally settled in accord- 
ance with the suggestion of Alphenus, in his Digests, 
book ii. Alphenus says, in brief, that the fear must 
be a genuine fear, and that reason for no ordinary 
dread must be proved. Hence Arnault Ferton, in 
his Customal of Burgundy, advises that ' legitimate 
dread of phantasms which trouble men's rest and 
make night hideous ' is reason good for leaving a 
house, and declining to pay rent after the day of 
departure, Covarruvias, a Spanish legist, already 
quoted, agrees with Arnault Ferton. The Parlia- 
ment of Grenada, in one or two cases, decided in 
' Second edition, Buon, Paiis, 1605, First edition, Angers, 1536, 



COCK LANE AND COMMOS-SENSE. 

favour of the tenant, and against the landlord of 
houses where spectres racketed, Le Loyer now 
reports the pleading;s in a famous case, of which he 
does not give the date. Incidentally, however, we 
learn that it can hardly have been earlier than 1550, 
The cause was heard, on appeal, before the Parle- 
ment de Paris. 

Pierre Piquet, guardian of Nicolas Macquereau 
(a minor), let to Giles Bolacre a house in the suburbs 
of Tours. Poor Bolacre was promptly disturbed by 
a noise and routing of invisible spirits, which suffered 
neither himself nor his family to sleep o' nights. 
He then cited Piquet, also Daniel Macquereau, who 
was concerned in the letting of the house, before the 
local seat of Themis. The case was heard, and the 
judge at Tours broke the lease, the hauntings being 
insupportable nuisances. But this he did without 
letters royal. The lessors then appealed, and the 
case came before the Cour de Parlement in Paris. 
Maitre Chopin was for the lessors, Nau appeared for 
the tenant. Chopin first took the formal point, 
the Tours judge was formally wrong in breaking a 
covenant without letters royal, a thing particularly 
bad in the case of a minor, Nicolas Macquereau. 

So much for the point of form ; as to the matter, 
Maitre Chopin laughed at the bare idea of noisy 
spirits. This is notable because, in an age when 
witches were burned frequently, the idea of a haunted 
house could be treated by the learned counsel as a 
mere waggery. Yet the belief in haunted houses 
has survived the legal prosecution of witches. 
' The judge in Tours has merely and mischievously 



GHOSTS BEFORE THE LAW. 

encouraged superstiLion.' All ghosts, brownies, 
lutins, are mere bugbeai^s of children ; here Maitre 
Chopin quotes Plato, and Philo Jud<eus in the 
original, also Empedocles, Marcus Aurelius, Ter- 
tullian, Quintilian, Dioscorides. Perhaps Bolacre 
and his family suffer from nightmare. If so, a 
physician, not a solicitor, is their man. Or again, 
granting that their house ts haunted, they should 
appeal to the clergy, not to the law. 

Manifestly this is a point to be argued. Do the 
expenses of exorcism fall on landlord or tenant ? 
This, we think, can hardly be decided by a quotation 
from Epictetus. Alexis Comnenus bids us seek a 
bishop in the case of psychical phenomena (ra ^frv^iKa 
&iravTa). So Maitre Chopin argues, but he evades 
the point. Is it not the business of the owner of the 
house to ' whustle on his ain parten,' to have his own 
bogie exorcised ? Of course Piquet and Macquereau 
may argue that the bogie is Bolacre's bogie, that it 
flitted to the house with Bolacre; but that is a ques- 
tion of fact and evidence. 

Chopin concludes that a lease is only voidable in 
case of material defect, or nuisance, as of pestilential 
air, not in a case which, after all, is a mere vice d'csprit. 
Here Maitre Chopin sits down, with a wink at the 
court, and Nau pleads for the tenant. First, why 
abuse the judge at Tours? The lessors argued the 
case before him, and cannot blame him for credulity. 
The Romans, far from rejecting such ideas {as Chopin 
had maintained), used a ritual service for ejecting 
spooks, so Ovid testifies. Greek and Roman hauntings 
are cited from Pliny, Plutarch, Suetonius; in the 



272 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

last case (ghost of Caligula), the house had to be 
destroyed, Hke the house at Wolflee where the ghost, 
resenting Presbyterian exorcism, killed the Rev. Mr- 
Thomson of Southdean, father of the author of The 
Castle of Indolence. ' As to Plato, cited by ray learned 
brother, Plato believed in hauntings, as we read in 
the Phacdo,' Nau has him here. In brief, ' the defend- 
ants have let a house as habitable, well knowing the 
same to be infested by spirits '. The Fathers are then 
cited as witnesses for ghosts. The learned counsel's 
argument about a vice d'esprit is a pitiable pun. 

The decision of the court, unluckily, is not pre- 
served by Le Loyer. The counsel for Bolacre told 
Le Loyer that the case was adjourned on the formal 
point, but, that, having obtained letters royal for 
his client, he succeeded in getting the remainder 
of the lease declared void. Comparing, however, 
Bouchel, s. V. Louage, in his Bihliothhque du droit 
Frangois, one finds that the higher court reversed the 
decision of the judge at Tours. In the Edinburgh 
case, 1835, the tenant, Captain Molesworth, did not 
try to have his lease quashed, but he did tear up 
floors, pull down wainscots, and bore a hole into the 
next house, that of his landlord, Mr. Webster, in 
search of the cause of the noises. Mr. Webster, 
therefore, brought an action to restrain him from 
these experiments. 

Le Loyer gives two cases of ghosts appearing to 
denounce murderers in criminal cases. Repossessed 
the speech of the President Brisson (at that time 
an advocate), in which he cited the testimony of the 
spectre of Madame de Colommiers, mysteriously 



GHOSTS BEFORE THE LAW. 



273 



I 



murdered in full day, with her children and their 
nurse. Her ghost appeared to her husband, when 
wide awake, and denounced her own cousins. As 
there was no other evidence, beyond the existence of 
motive, the accused were discharged. In another 
well-known case, before the Parlement de Bretagne, 
the ghost of a man who had mysteriously vanished, 
guided his brother to the spot where his wife and her 
paramour had buried him, after murdering him. Le 
Loyer does not give the date of this trial. The wife 
was strangled, and her body was burned. 

Modern times have known dream-evidence in 
cases of murder, as in the Assynt murder, and the 
famous Red Bams affair. But Thomas Harris's is 
probably the last ghost cited in a court of law. On 
the whole, the ghosts have gained httle by these 
legally attested appearances, but the trials do throw 
a curious light on the juridical procedure of our an- 
cestors. The famous action against the ghosts in 
the Eyrbyggja Saga was not before a Christian court, 
and is too well known for quotation.' 



'Dr. Lee, 



The 



Sights , 



d Saimds {p. 43}, quotes 
pay n 



I, but were 



i-Boited. No reference la authorities is given. There was also a 

e al Dublin in 1885. Waldion's house was disturbed. ' stones 

e thrown at the windows and doors.' and Waidron accused his 

neighbour, Kiernan, of these assaults. He lost his case {Eveuing 



Slandar 



Febiu 



ted). 



A MODERN TRIAL FOR WITCHCRAFT. 

Thorel V. Tinel. Action for libel in 1851. Mr. Dak Owen's 
incomplete version of this affair. The suit really a trial 
for witchcraft. Spectral obsession. Movements of objects. 
Rapping!. Incidental folk-lore. Old G. Thorel and 
the curl. The wizard's revenge. The haunted parlour 
boarder. Examples of magical tripping up, and provoked 
hallucinations. Case of Dr. Gibotteau and Berthe the 
hospital nurse. Similar case in the Salem affair, i6g2. 
Evidence of witnesses to abnormal phenomena. Mr. 
Robert de Saint Victor. M. de Mirville. Thorel non- 
suited. Other modern French examples of witchcraft. 

Perhaps the last trial for witchcraft was the case 
of Thorel v. Tinel, heard before the juge de paix of 
Yerville, on January 28, and February 3 and 4, 
1851. The trial was, in form, the converse of those 
with which old jurisprudence was familiar. Tinel, 
the Cure of Cideville, did not accuse the shepherd 
Thorel of sorcery, but Thorel accused Tinel of de- 
faming his character by the charge of being a war- 
lock. Just as when a man prosecutes another for 
saying that he cheated at cards, or when a woman 
prosecutes another for saying that the plaintiff stole 
diamonds, it is really the guilt or innocence of the 
plaintiff that is in question, so the issue before the 
court at Yerville was: ' Is Thorel a warlock or not ? ' 
The court decided that he himself had been the chief 



A MODERN TRIAI- FOR WITCHCRAFT. 275 

agent in spreadinj; the slander against himself, he 
was non-suited, and had to pay costs, but as to the 
real cause of the events which were attributed to the 
magic of Thorel, the court was unable to pronounce 
an opinion. 

This curious case has often been cited, as by Mr. 
Robert Dale Owen, in his Footfalls on the Boundary 
of Another World, ^ but Mr. Owen, by accident or 
design, omitted almost all the essential particulars, 
everything which connects the affair with such trans- 
actions as the witch epidemic at Salem, and the 
trials for sorcery before and during the Restoration. 
Yet, in the events at Cideville, and the depositions of 
witnesses, we have all the characteristics of witch- 
craft. First we have men by habit and repute 
sorcerers. Then we have cause of offence given to 
these. Then we have their threats, malum tninatuin, 
then we have evil following the threats, damnum ■ 
secuiwH. Just as of old, that damnum, that damage, 
declares itself in the ' possession ' of young people, 
who become, more or less, subject to trances and 
convulsions. One of them is haunted, as in the old 
witchcraft cases, by the phantasm of the sorcerer. 
The phantasm (as in Cotton Mather's examples) is 
wounded, a parallel wound is found on the suspected 
warlock. Finally, the house where the obsessed 
victims live is disturbed by knocks, raps, flight of 
objects, and inexplicable movements of heavy fumi- i 
ture. Thus all the notes of a bad affair of witchcraft 
are attested in a modern trial, under the third Empire. 
Finally, some curious folk-lore is laid bare, light is 
'p. 195, London, i860. 



276 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

cast on rural life and superstition, and a singular 
corroboration nf a singular statement, much more 
recent than the occurrences at Cideville, is obtained. 
A more astonishing example of survival cannot be 
imagined, of survival, or of disconnected and spon- 
taneous revival and recrudescence,^ 

There was at Auzebosc, near famous Yvetot, an 
old shepherd named G — ■ — ■: he was the recognised 
' wise man,' or white witch of the district, and some 
less noted rural adepts gave themselves out as his 
pupils. In March, 1849, M. Tine!. Cure of Cideville, 
visited a sick peasant, and advised him to discard old 
G., the shepherd magical, and send for a physician. 
G. was present, though concealed, heard the cure's 
criticisms, and said: 'Why does he meddle in my 
business, I shall meddle in his; he has pupils in his 
house, we'll see how long he keeps them.' In a few 
days, G. was arrested, as practising medicine un- 
authorised, was imprisoned for some months, and 
fancied that the cure had a share in this persecution. 
All this, of course, we must take as " the clash of 
the country side,' intent, as there was certainly 
damnum secutitm, on establishing malum minatum. 

On a farm near the cure's house in Cideville was 
another shepherd, named Thorel, a man of forty, 
described as dull, illiterate, and given to boasting 
about his powers as a disciple of the venerable G. 
Popular opinion decided that G. employed Thorel 
to procure his vengeance ; it was necessary that a 

' The account follou'nt here is that of the nanatoi in La Table 
FarliaiU, p. 130, who differs in some points from the Marquis de 
Mitville in his Fragmtiit J'un Onvnigt IniJit, Paris, 1852. 



A MODERN TRIAL FOR WITCHCRAFT. 

sorcerer should touch his intended victim, and G. had 
not the same conveniency for doing so as Thorel, 
In old witch trials ue sometimes find the witch 
kissing her destined prey.^ Thorel, so it was said, 
succeeded in touching, on Nov. 25, 1850, M. Tinel's 
two pupils, in a crowd at a sale of wood. The lads, 
of fifteen and twelve, were named Lemonier and 
Bunel. For what had gone before, we have, so far, 
only public chatter, for what followed we have the 
sworn evidence in court of the cure's pupils, in 
January and February, 1851. According to Le- 
monier, on Nov. 26, while studying, he heard 
light blows of a hammer, these recurred daily, about 
5. P.M. When M. Tinel, his tutor, said plus fort, the 
noises were louder. To condense evidence which 
becomes tedious by its eternal uniformity, popular 
airs were beaten on demand; the noise grew unbear- 
able, tables moved untouched, a breviary, a knife, 
a spit, a shoe flew wildly about. Lemonier was 
buffeted by a black hand, attached to nobody. ' A 
kind of human phantasm, clad in a blouse, haunted 
me for fifteen days wherever I went ; none but my- 
self could see it.' He was dragged by the leg by a 
mysterious force. On a certain day, when Thorel 
found a pretext for visiting the house, M. Tinel made 
him beg Lemonier's pardon, clearly on the ground 
that the swain had bewitched the boy, ' As soon as 
I saw him I recognised the phantasm which had 
haunted me for a fortnight, and I said to M. Tinel : 
"There is the man who follows me".' Thorel knelt 

' For bewitching by touch see Cotton Mather's Wonden of the 
InvisibU World, p. ijo. ' Librafy of Old Auihois,' London, 1S63. 



278 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

to the boy, asked his pardon, and pulled violently at 
his clothes. As defendant, perhaps, the cure could 
not be asked to corroborate these statements. The 
evidence of the other boy, Bunel, was that, on Nov. 
26, he heard first a rush of wind, then tappings on 
the wall. He corroborated Lemonier's testimony 
to the musical airs knocked out, the volatile furniture, 
and the recof^ition in Thorel of the phantom. ' In 
the evening,' said Bunel, ' Lemonier en eut une 
crise de nerfs dans iaquelle il avait perdu connais- 
sance." 

Leaving the boys' sworn evidence, and returning 
to the narrative with its gossip, we learn that Thorei 
boasted of his success, and said that, if he couid but 
touch one of the lads again, the furniture would dance, 
and the windows would be broken. Meanwhile, we 
are told, nails were driven into points in the floor 
where Lemonier saw the spectral figure standing. 
One nail became red hot, and the wood round it 
smoked: Lemonier said that this nail had hit 'the 
man in the blouse ' on the cheek. Now, when Thorel 
was made to ask the boy's pardon, and was recognised 
by him as the phantom, after the experiment with 
the nail, Thorel bore on his cheek the mark of the 
wound I 

This is in accordance with good precedents in 
witchcraft. A witch-hare is wounded, the witch, in 
her natural form, has the same wound. At the trial 
of Bridget Bishop, in the court of Oyer and Ter- 
miner, held at Salem, June 2, r5g2, there was 
testimony brought in that a man striking once at the 
place where a bewitched person said the shape of Mrs. 



A MODERN TRIAL FOR WITCHCRAFT. 279 

Bishop stood, the bewitched cried out, Ihat he had tore 
her eoal, in the place then particularly specified, and 
Bishop's coat was found to be torn in that very place.' 
Next day, after Thorel touched the boy, the windows 
broke, as he had prophesied. Then followed a curious 
scene in which Thorel tried, in presence of the maire, 
to touch the cure, who retreated to the end of the 
room, and struck the shepherd with his cane. There- 
upon Thorel brought his action for libel and assault 
against the cure. Forty-two witnesses were heard, 
it was proved that Thorel had, in fact, frequently 
accused himself, and he was non-suited : his counsel 
spoke of appealing, but, unluckily, the case was not 
carried to a higher court. In a few weeks the boys 
were sent to their homes, when (according to the 
narrative) there were disturbances at the home of the 
younger lad. Thus the curS lost his pupils. 

A curious piece of traditional folk-lore came out, 
but only as hearsay, in court. M. Cheval, Maire of 
Cideville, deposed that a M. Savoye told him that 
Thorel had once been shepherd to a M. Tricot. At 
that time Thorel said to one of two persons in his 
company: 'Every time I strike my cabin (a shelter 
on wheels used by shepherds) you will fall," and, at 
each stroke, the victim felt something seize his throat, 
and fell !^ This anecdote is curious, because in the 
Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research is a 
long paper by Dr. Gibotteau, on his experiments with 

' Cotton Mather, op. cit., p. 131. 

' T<ibk Pnrlantc, p. 151, A somewhat different version is given, 
f. 145. The narrator seems to say that Cheval himself deposed to 
having witnessed this experiment. 



zSo COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE, 

a hospital nurse called Berthe, This woman, accord- 
ing to the doctor, had the power of malting him see 
hallucinations, of a nature more or less horrible, from 
a distance. She had been taught some traditional 
feats of rural sorcery, among others that of making 
a man stumble, or fall, as he walked. The doctor 
does not make any allusion to the Cidevilie affair, 
and it seems probable that this trick is part of the 
peasant's magical repertoire, or, rather, ' that the 
peasant warlocks boast of being able to perform the 
trick. But, if we can accept the physician's evidence, 
as ' true for him,' at least, then a person like Berthe 
really might affect, from a distance, a boy like 
Lemonier with a haunting hallucination. To do 
this is witchcraft, and for crimes of this kind, or on 
false charges of this kind, poor Mrs. Bishop was 
burned at Salem in 1692. 

At the lowest, we have all the notes of sorcery 
as our rude ancestors knew it, in this modem 
affair. Two hundred years earlier, Thorel would 
have been burned, and G., too, probably, for the 
Maire of Cidevilie swore that before the disturbances, 
and three weeks after G. was let out of prison, Thorel 
had warned him of the trouble which G. would 
bring on the cure. Meanwhile the evidence shows 
no conscious malignity on the part of the two hoys. 
They at first took very little notice of the raps, 
attributing the noises to mice. Not till the sounds 
increased, and showed intelligence, as by drumming 
tunes, did the lads concern themselves much about 
the matter. At no time (it seems) did they ask to 
be sent home, and, of course, to be relieved from 



A MODERN TRIAL FOR WITCHCRAFT. 281 

their lessons and sent home would be their motive, 
if they practised a fraud. We may admit that, from 
rural tradition, the boys might have learned what the 
customary phenomena are, knocks, raps, moving 
tables, heavy objects sailing tranquilly about a room. 
It would be less easy for them to produce these 
phenomena, nor did the people of all classes who 
flocked to Cideville detect any imposture, 

A land surveyor swore that the raps went on when 
he had placed the boy in an attitude which made fraud 
(in his opinion) impossible. A g'entleman M, de B. 
' took all possible precautions ' but, nevertheless, was 
entertained by 'a noise which performed the tunes 
demanded '. He could discover no cause of the noise. 
M. Huet, touching a table with his finger, received 
responsive raps, which answered questions, ' at the 
very place where I struck, and beneath my finger. I 
cannot explain the fact, which, I am convinced, was 
not caused by the child, nor by any one in the house.' 
M. Cheval saw things fly about, he slept in the boy's 
room, and his pillow fiew from under his head. He 
lay down between the children, holding their hands, 
and placing his feet on theirs, when the coverlet of 
the bed arose, and floated away. The Marquis de 
Mirville had a number of answers by raps, which 
staggered him very much, but the force was quite 
feeble when he asked for portions of Italian music. 
Madame de St. Victor felt herself pushed, and her 
clothes pulled in the cure's house, when no one was 
near her. She also saw furniture behave in a 
fantastic manner, and M. Raoul Robert de St. 
Victor had many such experiences. M, Paul de St. 



282 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSB. 

Victor was not present. A desk sailed along : paused 
in air, and fell : ' I had never seen a movement of this 
kind, and I admit that I was alarmed '. Le Seigneur, 
a farmer, saw' a variety of objects arise and sail about': 
he was certain that the boys did not throw them, and 
when in their company, in the open air, between 
Cideville and Anzooville, ' I saw stones come to us, 
without striking us, hurled by some invisible force'. 
There was other confirmatory evidence, from men of 
physic, and of the law. 

The juge de paix, as we have seen, pronounced 
that the clearest point in the case was 'the absence 
of known cause for the effects,' and he non-suited 
Thorel, the plaintiff. 

The cause of the phenomena is, of course, as 
obscure for us as for the worthy magistrate. We 
can only say that, when precisely similar evidence 
was brought before judges and juries in England 
and New England, at a period when medicine, law, 
and religion all recognised the existence of witchcraft, 
magic, and diabolical possession, they had scarcely 
any choice but to condemn the accused. Causa patet, 
they said : ' The devil is at the bottom of it all, and 
the witch is his minister'. 

The affair of Cideville by no means stands alone 
in modern France, in 1853, two doctors and other 
witnesses signed a deposition as to precisely similar 
phenomena attending Adelaide Fran5oise Millet, a 
girl of twelve, at Songhien, in Champagne. The 
trouble, as at Cock Lane, began by a sound of 
scratching on the wood of her bed. The clerk of the 
juge de la paix, the master of the Douane, two 



A MODERN TRIAL FOR WITCHCRAFT. 28j 

doctors, and others visited her, and tied her hands 
and feet. The noise continued. Mysterious missiles 
pursued a girl in Martinique, in 1854. The house, 
which was stormed by showers of stone, in Paris 
(1846), entirely baffled the pohce.' There is a more 
singular parallel to the Cideville affair, the account 
was printed from the letter of a correspondent in the 
Abeille of Chartres, March 11, 1849.^ At Gaubert, 
near Guillonville, a man was imprisoned for thefts of 
hay, the property of a M. Doll^ans. Two days after 
his arrest, namely, on December 31, 1848, the 
servant of M. Dolleans had things of all sorts thrown 
at her from all directions. She fell ill, and went into 
hospital for five days, where x/je was untroubled. On 
her return, in the middle of a conversation, ribbons 
and bits of string would fly at her, and twist them- 
selves round her neck, as in the case of Francis 
Fey, of Spraiton, given by Aubrey and Bovet Made- 
moiselle Dolleans carefully watched the girl for a 
fortnight, and never let her out of her sight, but 
could not discover any fraud. After about a month 
the maid was sent home, where she was not molested. 
Naturally wc see in her the half-insane cunning 
of hysteria, but that explanation does not apply to 
little Master DoU&ans, a baby of three months old. 
The curse fell on him : however closely his parents 
watched him, pots and pans showered into his cradle, 
the narrator himself saw a miscellaneous collection 
of household furniture mysteriously amassed there. 

iGitzetlc -Us Tribmiaux, February 3, iS4fi, quoted in Toi/t 
Pnrlanli, p. 306. 

^ Tabic ParlaiiU; p. 174. 



284 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

The A beille of Chartres held this letter over, till 
two of its reporters had visited the scene of action, 
and interviewed doctors, priests, and farmers, who 
all attested the facts. Happily, in this case, an ex- 
orcism by a priest proved efficacious. At Cideville, 
holy water and consecrated medals were laughed at 
by the sprite, who, by the way, answered to the 
name of Robert. 




PRESBYTERIAN GHOST HUNTERS. 

Religious excitement and hallucination. St. Anthony. Zulu 
catechumens. Haunted Covenanters. Strange case of 
Thomas Smeafon. Law's ' Memorialls '. A deceitful 
spirit. Examples of imane and morbidly sensitive 
ghosts. ' Le reoenani ijui s'acatse s'exatse.' Raising 
the devil in Irvine. Mode of evocation. IVodrow. His 
account of Margaret Lang, and Miss Shaw of Bar- 
garran. The unlucky Shaws. Lord Torphichen's son. 
Cases from Wodrow. Lord Middleton's story. Haunted 
house. Wraiths. Lord Orrery's ghost no metaphysician. 
The Bride of Lammermoor. Visions sf the sainls. Their 
cautiousness, Gltost appearing to a Jacobite. Ghost of a 
country tradesman. Case of telepathy known to Wodrow. 
Avenging spectres. Lack of evidence. Tale of Cotton 
Mather. 

In spite of a very general opinion to the opposite 
effect, it is not really easy to determine in what 
kind of age, and in what conditions of thought and 
civilisation, ghosts will most frequently appear, and 
ghostly phenomena will chiefly abound. We are 
all ready to aver that 'ghaists and eldritch fantasies' 
will be most common 'in the dark ages,' in periods 
of ignorance or superstition. But research in medife- 
val chronicles, and in lives of the saints makes it 
apparent that, while marvels on a large and impos- 
ing scale were frequent, simple ordinary apparitions 



286 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 



and haunted houses occur comparatively seldom. 
Perhaps they were too common to be thought worth 
noticing, yet they are noticed occasionally, and, even 
in these periods of superstition, were apparently re- 
garded as not quite everyday phenomena. 

One thing in this matter is tolerably certain, 
namely, that intense religious excitement produces 
a tendency to believe in marvels of all sorts, and 
also begets a capacity for being hallucinated, for 
beholding spectres, strange lights, dubious miracles. 
Thus every one has heard of the temptation of St. 
Anthony, and of other early Christian Fathers. 
They were wont to be surrounded by threatening 
aspects of wild beasts, which had no real existence. 
In the same way the early Zulu converts of Bishop 
Callaway, when they retired to lonely places to pray, 
were haunted by visionary lions, and phantasms of 
enemies with assegais. They, probably, had never 
heard of St. Anthony's similar experiences, nor, again, 
of the diabolical attacks on the converts of Catholic 
missionaries in Cochin China, and in Peru. 

Probably the most recent period of general re- 
ligious excitement in our countiy was that of the 
Covenant in Scotland. Not a mere scattered congre- 
gation or two, as in the rise of Irvingism. but a vast 
proportion of a whole people lived lives of prolonged 
ecstatic prayer, and often neglected food for daj's. Con- 
sequently devout Covenanters, retired in lonely places 
to pray, were apt to be infested by spectral animals, 
black dogs as a rule, and they doubted not at all 
that the black dog was the Accuser of the Brethren. 
We have Catholic evidence, in Father Piatti's Life 



oj Father Elphimlonc, S.J., to black dogs haunting 
Thomas Smeaton, the friend of Andrew Melville 
C1580). But Father Piatti thinks that the dogs 
were avenging devils, Smeaton being an apostate 
(MS. Life of Elpkinstone). Again Covenanters 
would see mysterious floods of light, as the heathen 
also used, but, like the heathen, they were not certain 
as to whether the light was produced by good or bad 
spirits. Like poor bewildered Porphyry, many cen- 
turies earlier, they found the spirits 'very deceitful'. 
You never can depend on them. This is well illus- 
trated by the Rev. Mr. Robert Law, a Covenanting 
minister, but not a friend of fanaticism and sedition. 

In his Metnorialls, a work not published till long 
after his death, he gives this instance of the deceit- 
fulness of sprites. The Rev. Mr. John Shaw, in 
Ireland, was much troubled by witches, and by 'cats 
coming into his chamber and bed'. He died, so did 
his wife, 'and, as was supposed, witched'. Before 
Mr. Shaw's death his groom, in the stable, saw 'a 
great heap of hay rolling toward him, and then 
appeared ' (the hay not the groom) 'in the shape and 
lykness of a hair. He charges it to appear in human 
shape, which it did.' The appearance made a tryst 
to meet the groom, but Mr. Shaw forbade this 
tampering with evil in the lykness of a bair. How- 
ever a stone was thrown at the groom, which he 
took for a fresh invitation from the bair, so he went 
to the place appointed. ' The divill appears in human 
shape, with his heid running down with blood,' and 
explains that he is ' the spirit of a murdered man 
who lay under his bed, and buried in the ground, 



288 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 



and who wa-i murdered by such a man, naming 
him by name". The groom, very naturally, dug 
in the spot pointed out by this versatile phantom, 
' but finds nothing of bones or anything lyke a ffrave, 
and shortly after this man dyes,' having failed to 
discover that the person accused of murder had ever 
existed at all. 

Many ghosts have a perfect craze for announcing 
that bodies or treasures, are buried where there is 
nothing of the sort. Glanvill has a tale of a ghost 
who accused himself of a murder, and led a man 
to a place in a wood where the corpse of the slain 
was to be found. There was no corpse, the ghost 
was mad. The Psychical Society have published 
the narratives of a housemaid and a butler who saw 
a lady ghost. She, later, communicated through 
a table her intention to appear at eleven p.m. The 
buller and two ladies saw her, the gentlemen present 
did not. The ghost insisted that jewels were buried 
in the cellar; the butler dug, but found none. 
The writer is acquainted with another ghost, not 
published, who labours under morbid delusions. For 
reasons wholly unfounded on fact she gave a great 
deal of trouble to a positive stranger. Now there 
was literally no sense in these proceedings. Such 
is ghostly evidence, ever deceitful ! 

' It's not good,' says Mr, Law, ' to come in commun- 
ing terms with Satan, there is a snare in the end of 
it ; ' yet people have actually been hanged, in England, 
on the evidence of a ghost I On the evidence of the 
devil, some other persons were accused of theft, in 
1682. This is a remarkable instance; we often hear 



PRESBYTERIAN GHOST HUNTERS. 389 

of raising the ghostly foe, but we are seldom told how 
it can be done. This is how it was done in February, 
1682, at the house of the Hon. Robert Montgomery, in 
Irvine. Some objects of silver plate were stolen, a 
maid was suspected, she said ' she would raise the devil, 
but she would know who the thief was'. Taking, there- 
fore, a Bible, she went into a cellar, where she drew a 
circle round her, and turned a sieve on end twice, 
from right to left. In her hand she held nine 
feathers from the tail of a black cock. She next 
read Psalm h. forwards, and then backwards Revela- 
tions ix. 19. ' He ' then appeared, dressed as a 
sailor with a blue cap. At each question she threw 
three feathers at him: finally he showed as a black 
man with a long tail. Meanwhile all the dogs in 
Irvine were barking, as in Greece when Hecate stood 
by the cross-ways. The maid now came and told 
Mrs. Montgomery (on information received) that the 
stolen plate was in the box of a certain servant, wherci 
of course, she had probably placed it herself. How- 
ever the raiser of the devil was imprisoned for the 
spiritual offence. She had learned the rite ' at Dr. 
Colvin's house in Ireland, who used to practise this'. 

The experiment may easily be repeated by the 
scientitic. 

Though Mr. Law is strong in witches and magic, 
he has very few ghost stories; indeed, according to 
his philosophy, even a common wraith of a living 
person is really the devil in that disguise. The 
learned Mr. Wodrow, too, for all his extreme pains, 
cannot be called a very successful amateur of spectres. 
A mighty ghost hunter was the Rev. Robert Wod- 
19 



zgo 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 



row of Eastwood, in Renfrewshire, the learned 
historian of the sufferings of the Kirk of Scotland 
(1679-1734). Mr. Wodrow was an industrious anti- 
quarian, a student of geology, as it was then be- 
ginning to exist, a correspondent for twenty years of 
Cotton Mather, and a good-hearted kind man, that 
would hurt nobody but a witch or a Papist. He had 
no opportunity to injure members of either class, but 
it is plain, from his four large quarto volumes, called 
Analecia, that he did not lack the will. In his 
AnaUcla Mr. Wodrow noted down all the news that 
reached him, scandals about ' The Pretender,' Court 
Gossip, Heresies of Ministers, Remarkable Provi- 
dences, Woful Apparitions, and 'Strange Steps of 
Providence'. Ghosts, second sight, dreams, omens, 
premonitions, visions, did greatly delight him, but it 
is fair to note that he does not vouch for all his 
marvels, but merely jots them down, as matters of 
hearsay. Thus his pages are valuable to the student 
of superstition, because they contain 'the clash of 
the country' for about forty years, and illustrate the 
rural or ecclesiastical abcrglaube of our ancestors, at 
the moment when witchcraft was ceasing to be a 
recognised criminal offence. 

A diary of Wodrow's exists, dating from April 3, 
1697, when he was but nineteen years of age. On 
June 10, 1697, he announces the execution of some 
witches at Paisley: seven were burned, among them 
one, Margaret Lang, who accused herself of horrible 
crimes. The victim of the witches burned in 1697 was 
a child of eleven, daughter of John Shaw of Bargarran. 
This family was unlucky in its spiritual accidents. 



PRESBYTERIAN GHOST HUNTERS. 

The previous laird, as we learn from the contem- 
porary Law, in his Memorialls, rode his horse into 
a river at night, and did not arrive at the opposite 
bank. Every effort was made to find his body in 
the stream, which was searched as far as the sea. 
The corpse was at last discovered in a ditch, two 
miles away, shamefully mutilated. The money of 
the laird, and other objects of value, were still in 
his pockets. This was regarded as the work of 
fiends, but there is a more plausible explanation. 
Nobody but his groom saw the laird ride into the 
river; the chances are that he was murdered in 
revenge, — certain circumstances point to this, — and 
that the servant was obliged to keep the secret, and 
invent the story about riding the ford. 

The daughter of Bargarran's successor and heir 
was probably a hysterical child, who was led, by the 
prevailing superstition, to believe that witches caused 
her malady. How keen the apprehensions were among 
children, we learn from a document preserved by 
Wodrow. An eminent Christian of his acquaintance 
thought in boyhood that an old woman looked crossly 
at him, and he went in dread of being bewitched 
for a whole summer. The mere terror might have 
caused fits, he would then have denounced the old 
woman, and she would probably have been burned, 
Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, in his preface to Law's 
Memorialls {p. xcii.). says that Miss Shaw was 'antient 
in wickedness,' and thus accounts for her 'pretend- 
ing to be bewitched,' by way of revenging herself on 
one of the maid -servants. Twenty people were 
finally implicated, several were executed, and one 



292 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

killed himself. The child, probably hysterical, and 
certainly subject to convulsions, was really less to 
blame than ' the absurd credulity of various otherwise 
worthy ministers, and some topping professors in 
and about Glasgow,' as Sharpe quotes the MS. 
'Treatise on witchcraft' of the Rev. Mr. Bell. 
Strangely enough the great thread manufactories of 
Renfrewshire owed their origin to this Miss Shaw, 
aided by a friend who had acquired some technical 
secrets in Holland, She married a minister in 1718, 
and probably her share in an abominable crime lay 
light on her conscience. Her fellow-sufferer from 
witchcraft, a young Sandilands, son of Lord Torphi- 
chen (1720), became a naval officer of distinguished 1 
gallantry. 

Wodrow does not appear to have witnessed the 
execution at Paisley, one of the last in Scotland, but 
he had no doubt that witches should be put to death. 
In 1720, when the son of Lord Torphichen exhibited 
some curious phenomena, exaggerated by report 
into clairvoyance and flying in the air, nobody was 
punished. In spite of his superstition in regard to 
witches, Wodrow {September 20, 1697) sensibly 
explains a death-wraith by the anxiety of the lady 
who beheld it. He also, still in the diary, records 
a case of second sight, but that occurred in Argyle- 
shire. It will be found, in fact, that all the second- 
sighted people except some ministers during the 
sufferings (and they reckoned as prophets) were 
Highlanders. Considering his avidity for ghost- 
stories, it is remarkable that he scarcely ever 
receives them at even second hand, and that most 



PRESBYTERIAN GHOST HUNTERS. 293 

of them are remote in point of time. On the other 
side, he secures a few religious visions, as of shining 
lights comforting devout ladies, from the person 
concerned. His narratives fall into regular cate- 
gories, Haunted Houses, Ghosts, Wraiths, Second 
Sight. Consolatory Divine Visions. Thus Mr. 
Stewart's uncle, Harry, ' ane eminent Christian, and 
very joviall,' at a drinking party saw himself in bed, 
and his coffin at his bed-foot. This may be explained 
as a case of ' the horrors,' a malady incident to the 
jovial. He died in a week, In vino Veritas. 

Lord Middleton's ghost-story Wodrow got from the 
son of a man who, as Lauderdale's chaplain, heard 
Middleton tell it at dinner. He had made a cove- 
nant with the Laird of Babigni thai the first who 
died should appear to the survivor, Babigni was 
slain in battle, Middleton was put in the Tower, 
where Babigni appeared to him, sat with him for 
an hour by the clock, and predicted the Restoration. 
' His hand was hote and soft,' but Middleton. brave in 
the field, was much alarmed. He had probably drunk 
a good deal in the Tower. This anecdote was very 
widely rumoured. Aubrey publishes a version of it 
in his Miscellanies, and Law gives another in his 
Memorialls (p. 162). He calls 'Babigni' — 'Barbigno,' 
and ' Balbegno'. According to Law, it was not the 
laird's ghost that appeared, but ' the devil in his 
lykness '. Law and Aubrey make the spirit depart 
after uttering a couplet, which they quote variously. 

For a haunted house, Wodrow provides us with 
that of Johnstone of Mellantae, in Annandale (1707). 
The authority is Mr. Cowan, who had it from Mr. 



294 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 



Murray, minister of St. Mungo's, who got it from 
Mellantae himself, the worthy gentleman weeping 
as he described his misfortunes. His daughter, Miss 
Johnstone, was milking a cow in the byre, bydayhght, 
when she saw a tall man, almost naked, probably a 
tramp, who frightened her into a swoon. The house 
was then 'troubled and disturbed' by flights of stones, 
and disappearance of objects. Young Domock, after 
a visit to Nfellantae, came back with a story that loud 
knockings were heard on the beds, and sounds of pewter 
vessels being thrown about, though, in the morning, 
all were found in their places. The ghost used also 
to pull the medium. Miss Johnstone, by the foot, and 
toss her bed-ctothes about. 

Ne.\t, at first hand from Mr. Short, we have a 
death-wraith beheld by him of his friend Mr. Scrim- 
geour. The hour was five a.m. on a summer morn- 
ing, and Mr. Scrimgeour expired at that time in 
Edinburgh. Again, we have the affair of Mr. Blair, 
of St, Andrews, the probationer, and the devil, 
who, in return for a written compact, presented 
the probationer with an excellent sermon. On the 
petition of Mr. Blair, the compact fell from the roof 
of the church. The tale is told by Increase Mather 
about a French Protestant minister, and, as Increase 
wrote twenty years before Wodrow, we may regard 
Wodrow's anecdote as a myth; for the incident is 
of an unusual character, and not likely to repeat 
itself. We may also set aside, though vouched for 
by Lord Tullibardine's butler, 'ane litle old man 
with a fearful ougly face,' who appeared to the Rc\-. 
Mr. Lesly, Being asked whence he came, he said. 



nil Ji 



PRESBYTERIAN GHOST HUNTERS. 

'From hell,' and, being further interrogated as to 
why he came, he observed : ' To warn the nation to 
repent'. This struck Mr. Lesly as improbable on 
the face of it ; however, he was a good deal alarmed. 

Lord Orrery is well known in ghostly circles, as 
the evidence for a gentleman's butler being levitated, 
and floating about a room in his house. It may be 
less familiar that his lordship's own ghost appeared 
to his sister. She consulted Robert Boyle, F.R.S., 
who advised her, if Orrery appeared again, to ask 
him some metaphysical questions. She did so, and 
' I know these questions come from my brother,' 
said the appearance, ' He is too curious.' He 
admitted, however, that his body was 'an aerial body,' 
but declined to be explicit on other matters. This 
anecdote was told by Mr. Smith, who had it from Mr. 
Wallace, who had it from 'an English gentleman'. 
Mr. Menzies, minister of Erskine, once beheld the 
wraith of a friend smoking a pipe, but the owner 
of the wraith did not die, or do anything remarkable. 
To see a friendly wraith smoking a pipe, even if he 
take the liberty of doing so in one's bedroom, is not 
very ili-boding. To be sure Mr. Menzies' own father 
died not long after, but the attempt to connect the 
wraith of a third person with that event is somewhat 
desperate. 

Wodrow has a tame commonplace account of the 
Bride of Lammermoor's affair. On the other hand, 
he tells us concerning a daughter of Lord Stair, 
the Countess of Dumfries, that she 'was under a 
very odd kind of distemper, and did frequently fly 
from one end of the room to the other, and from the 



ag6 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

one side of the garden to the other. . ■ . The matter 
of fact is certain." At a garden party this accom- 
plishment would have been invaluable. 

We now, for a change, have a religious marvel. 
Mrs. Zuil, 'a very judiciouse Christian,' had a 
friend of devout character. This lady, being in bed, 
and in 'a ravishing frame,' 'observed a pleasant light, 
and one of the pleasantest forms, like a young child, 
standing on her shoulder". Not being certain that 
she was not dehrious, she bade her nurse draw her 
curtains, and bring her some posset. Thrice the 
nurse came in with posset, and thrice drew back in 
dread. The appearance then vanished, and for the 
fourth time the nurse drew the curtains, but, on this 
occasion, she presented the invalid with the posset. 
Being asked why she had always withdrawn before, 
she said she had seen 'like a boyn (halo?) above 
her mistress's head,' and added, ' it was her wraith, 
and a signe she would dye '. ' From this the lady was 
convinced that she was in no reverie.' A similar 
halo shone round pious Mr. Welsh, when in medi- 
tation, and also (according to Patrick Walker) round 
two of the Sweet Singers, followers of Meikle John 
Gibb, before they burned a Bible ! Gibb, a raving 
fanatic, went to America, where he was greatly ad- 
mired by the Red fndians, ' because of his much 
converse with the devil '. The pious of Wodrow's 
date distrusted these luminous appearances, as they 
might be angelical, but might also be diabohcal 
temptations to spiritual pride. Thus the blasphemous 
followers of Gibb were surrounded by a bright light, 
no less than pious Mr. Welsh, a very distinguished 



i^ai 



Uk^ 



PRESBYTERIAN GHOST HUNTERS. 



297 



Presbyterian minister. Indeed, this was taken ad- 
vantage of by Mr. Welsh's enemies, who, says his 
biographer Kirkton, 'were so bold as to call him no 
less than a wizard '. When Mr. Shields and Mr. John 
Dickson were imprisoned on the Bass Rock, and Mr, 
Shields was singing psalms in his cell, Mr, Dickson 
peeping in. saw 'a figure ail in white,' of whose pre- 
sence Mr. Shields was unconscious. He had only 
felt ' in a heavenly and elevated frame '. 

A clairvoyant dream is recorded on the authority 
of ' Dr. Clerk at London, who writes on the Trinity, 
and may be depended on in such accounts'. The 
doctor's father was Mayor of Norwich, ' or some 
other town,' and a lady came to him, bidding 
him arrest a tailor for murdering his wife. The 
mayor was not unnaturally annoyed by this appeal, 
but the lady persisted. She had dreamed twice : 
first she saw the beginning of the murder, then the 
end of it. As she was talking to the mayor, the 
tailor came in, demanding a warrant to arrest his 
wife's murderers ! He was promptly arrested, tried, 
and acquitted, but later confessed, and ' he was 
execut for the fact '. This is a highly improbable 
story, and is capped by another from Wodrow's 
mother-in-law. A man was poisoned : later his 
nephew slept in his room, and heard a voice cry, 
' Avenge the blood of your uncle ', This happened 
twice, and led to an inquiry, and the detection of the 
guilty. The nephew who received the warning was 
Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, ancestor of Sir Walter 
Scott's friend. 

We next have a Mahatma-like talc about Cotton 



298 COCK LANE AND COMUON-SENSB. 

Mather, from Mr. Stirling, who had it from a 
person who had it from the doctor's own mouth. 
Briefly. Cotton lost his sermon as he was riding 
to a place where he had to preach. He prayed for 
better !uck. and ' no sooner was his prayer over, but 
his papers uer conveyed to him, flying in the air 
upon him when riding, which was very surprizing'. 
It was, indeed ! Wodrow adds : ' Mind to write to 
the doctor about this '. This letter, if he ever WTote 
it, is not in the three portly volumes of his corre- 
spondence. 

The occurrence is more remarkable than the 
mysterious dispensation which enabled another 
minister to compose a sermon in his sleep. Mr. 
James Guthrie, at Stirling, 'had his house haunted 
by the devil, which was a great exercise to worthy 
Mr. Guthrie,' and, indeed, would have been a great 
exercise to almost any gentleman. Details are 
wanting, and as Mr. Guthrie had now been hanged 
for sixty years (1723), the facts are 'remote'. Mr, 
Guthrie, it seems, was unpopular at Stirling, and 
was once mobbed there. The devil may have been 
his political opponent in disguise. Mr, John Ander- 
son is responsible for the story of a great light seen, 
and a melodious sound heard over the house of 'a 
most singular Christian of the old sort,' at the 
moment of her death. Her name, unluckily, is un- 
certain. 

A case of ' telepathy ' we have, at first hand, from 
Mrs. Luke. When in bed 'a horror of darknes' 
came upon her about her daughter Martha, who was 
in Edinburgh, ' Sometimes she began to think that 



PRESBYTERIAN GHOST HUNTERS. 

her daughter was dead, or had run away with some 
person.' She remained in this anxiety til! six in the 
morning, when the cloud hfted. It turned out that 
Martha had heen in some peril at sea, but got safe 
into Leith Roads at six in the morning. A clair- 
voyant dream was also vouchsafed to Dr. Pitcaim, 
though 'a Jacobite, and a person of considerable 
sense,' as Wodrow quaintly remarks about another 
individual. 

The doctor was at Paris when a friend of his, 
' David ' (surname unknown), died in Edinburgh. 
The doctor dreamed for several nights running that 
David came to him, and that they tried to enter 
several taverns, which were shut. David then went 
away in a ship. As the doctor was in the habit of 
frequentinf,' taverns with David, the dreams do not 
appear to deserve our serious consideration. To be 
sure David 'said he was dead'. 'Strange vouch- 
safments of Providence to a person of the doctor's 
temper and sense,' moralises Wodrow. 

Curiously enough, a different version of Dr. Pit- 
cairn's dream is in existence. Several anecdotes 
about the doctor are prefixed, in manuscript, to a 
volume of his Latin poems, which was shown to Dr. 
Hibbert by Mr. David Laing, the well-known his- 
torian and antiquarian. Dr. Hibbert says: 'The 
anecdotes are from some one obviously on terms of 
intimacy with Pitcairn'. According:; to this note 
Robert Lindsay, a descendant of Sir David Lindsay 
of the Mount, was at college with the doctor. They 
made the covenant that " whoever dyed first should 
give account of his condition if possible '. This was 



30O 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 



in 1671. in 1675 Lindsay died, while Pitcairn was in 
Paris. On the night of Lindsay's death, Pitcairn 
dreamed that he was in Edinburgh, where Lindsay 
met him and said, 'Archie, perhaps ye heard I'm 
dead?' 'No, Roben.' The vision said he was to 
be buried in the Grey Friars, and offered to carry 
Pitcairn to a Happy spiritual country, ' in a well 
sailing small ship,' like Odysseus. Pitcairn said he 
must first see his parents. Lindsay promised to call 
again. ' Since which time A. P. never slept a night 
without dreaming that Lindsay told him he was 
alive. And, having a dangerous sickness, anno 1694, 
he was told by Roben that he was delayed for a time, 
and that it was properly his task to carry him off, 
but was discharged to tel! when.'' Dr. Hibbert 
thinks that Pitcairn himself dictated this account, 
much more marvellous than the form in which 
Wodrow received the story. 

Leaving a solitary Jacobite vision, for a true 
blue Presbyterian ' experience,' we learn that Wod- 
row's own wedded wife had a pious vision, 'a 
glorious, inexpressible brightness ', The thought 
which came presently was, ' This perhaps may be 
Satan, transforming himself into an angel of light'. 
' It mout or it moutn't.' In 1729, Wodrow heard of 
the ghost of the Laird of Coul, which used to ride 
one of his late tenants, transformed into a spectral 
horse. A chap-book containing Coul's discourse 
with Mr, Ogilby, a minister, was very popular in the 
last centurj'. Mr. Ogilby left an account in manu- 
script, on which the chap-book was said to be based. 
' Hibbert, Apparitions, p. in. 



PRESEYTCRIAN GHOST HUNTERS. 

Another ghost of a very moral turn appeared, and 
gave ministers information about a case of lawless 
love. This is said to be recorded in the registers of 
the Presbytery of Fordoun, but Wodrow is vague 
about the whole affair. 

We next come to a very good ghost of the old 
and now rather unfashionable sort. The authority 
is Mr. William Brown, who had it from the Rev. 
Mr. Mercer of Aberdalgie, ' as what was generally 
belived as to Dr. Rule, Principal at Edinburgh". 
Such is Wodrow's way, his ideas of evidence are 
quite rudimentary. Give him a ghost, and he does 
not care for 'contemporary record,' or ' corroborative 
testimony'. To come to the story. Dr. Rule, 
finding no room at an inn near Camie Mount, 
had a fire lit in a chamber of a large deserted 
house hard by. He went to bed, leaving a bright 
fire burning, when 'the room dore is opened, and an 
apparition, in shape of a cottnlry tradsinan, came in, 
and opened the courtains v/ithout speaking a word'. 
The doctor determined not to begin a conversation, 
so the apparition lighted the candles, brought them 
to the bedside, and backed to the door. Dr. Rule, 
like old Brer Rabbit, 'kept on a-saying nothing'. 
' Then the apparition took an effectuall way to raise 
the doctor. He caryed back the candles to the table, 
and, with the longs, took doun the kindled coals, and 
laid them on the deal chamber floor.' Dr. Rule now 
' thought it was time to rise,' and followed the appear- 
ance, who "carried the candles downstairs, set them 
on the lowest step, and vanished. Dr. Rule then 
lifted the candles, and went back to bed. Next mom- 



30Z COCK t,ANB AND COMMON-SENSE. 

ing he went to the sheriff, and told him there ' was 
murder in it '. The sheriff said, ' it might be so,' but, 
even if so, the crime was not recent, as the house for 
thirty years had stood empty. The step was taken up, 
and a dead body was found, ' and bones, to the convic- 
tion of all '. The doctor then preached on these unusual 
events, and an old man of eighty fell a-weeping, con- 
fessing that, as a mason lad, he had killed a com- 
panion, and buried him in that spot, while the house 
was being built. Consequently the house, though a 
new one, was haunted from the first, and was soon 
deserted. The narrator, Mr. Mercer, had himself 
seen two ghosts of murdered boys frequently in Dun- 
dee. He did not speak, nor did they, and as the 
rooms were comfortable he did not leave them. To 
have talked about the incident would only have been 
injurious to his landlady. 'The longer I live, the more 
unexpected things I meet with, and even among my 
own relations,' says Mr. Wodrow with much sim- 
plicity. But he never met with a ghost, nor even 
with any one who had met with a ghost, except Mr. 
Mercer. 

In the same age, or earlier. Increase Mather re- 
' presents apparitions as uncommonly scarce in New 
England, though diabolical possession and witchcraft 
were as familiar as influenza. It has been shown 
that, in nearly forty years of earnest collecting, Mr. 
Wodrow did not find a single supernatural occurrence 
which was worth investigating by the curious. Every 
tale was old, or some simple natural cause was at 
the bottom of the mystery, or the narrative rested on 
vague gossip, or was a myth. To-day, at any dinner 



PRESBYTERIAN GHOST HUNTERS. 303 

party, you may hear of bogles and wraiths at first or 
at second hand, in an abundance which would have 
rejoiced Wodrow. Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe vainly 
brags, in Law's Memorialise that * good sense and 
widely diffused information have driven our ghosts to 
a few remote castles in the North of Scotland ' (1819). 
But, however we are to explain it, the ghosts have 
come forth again, and, like golf, have crossed the 
Tweed. Now this is a queer result of science, 
common-sense, cheap newspapers, popular education, 
and progress in general. We may all confess to a 
belief in ghosts, because we call them * phantasmo- 
genetic agencies,* and in as much of witchcraft as we 
style * hypnotic suggestion '. So great, it seems, is 
the force of language ! ^ 

^ Mather's own account of the lost sermon (p. 298) is in his LifCy 
by Mr. Barrett Wendell, p. 118. It is by no means so romantic as 
Wodrow's version. 



THE LOGIC OF TABLE-TURNING. 

Bias in belief. Difficulty of examining problems in which 
unknown personal conditions are dominant. Comte 
Aginer de Gasparin on fabk-tuming. The rise of 
modem tabk-lurning. Rapping, French examples. 
A lady bitten by a spirit. Flying objects. The 'via 
media ' of M. de Gasparin. Tables are turned by 
recondite physical causes : not by muscular or spiritual 
actions. The author's (rain experiments. Motion with- 
out contact. Dr. Carpentei's views. Incredulity of 
M. de Gasparin as to phenomena beyond his own ex- 
perience. Ancient Greek phenomena. M. de Gasparin 
rejects 'spirits'. Dr. Carpenter neglects M. de Gas- 
parin's evidence. Survival and revival. Delacourfs 
ease. Home's ease. Simon Magus. Early seientifie 
training. Its results. Conclusion. 

While reason is fondly supposed to jjovern our 
conduct, and direct our conclusions, there is no doubt 
that our opinions are really regulated by custom, 
temperament, hope, and fear. We believe or dis- 
believe because other people do so, because our 
character is attracted to, or repelled by the unusual, 
the mysterious ; because, from one motive or another, 
we wish things to be thus, or fear that they may be 
thus, or hope that they may be so, and cannot but 
dread that they are otherwise. Again, the laws of 
Nature which have been ascertained are enough for 
, the conduct of life, and science constantly, and with 
I excellent reason, resists to the last gasp every at- 
tempt to recognise the existence of a new law. 



THE LOGIC OF TABLE-TURNING. 3O5 

which, after all, can apparently do little for the 
benefit of mankind, and may conceivably do some- 
thing by no means beneficial. Again, science is 
accustomed to deal with constant phenomena, which, 
given the conditions, will always result. The pheno- 
mena of the marvellous are not constant, or, rather, 
the conditions cannot be definitely ascertained. When 
Mr. Crookes made certain experiments on Home's 
power of causing a balance to move without contact 
he succeeded ; in the presence of some Russian 
savants a similar experiment failed. Granting that 
Mr. Crookes's tests were accurate (and the lay mind, 
at least, can see no flaw in them), we must suppose 
that the personal conditions, in the Russian case, 
were not the same. 

Now an electric current will inevitably do its work, 
if known and ascertained conditions are present ; a 
personal current, so to speak, depends on personal 
conditions which are unascertainable. It is inevitable 
that science, accustomed to the invariable, should turn 
away from phenomena which, if they do occur, seem, 
so far, to have a will of their own. That they have 
a will of their own is precisely their attraction 
for another class of minds, which recognises in them 
the action of unknown intelligences. There are 
also people who so dislike our detention in the prison 
house of old unvarying laws, that their bias is in 
favour of anything which may tend to prove that 
science, in her contemporary mood, is not infallible. 
As the Frenchman did not care what sort of scheme 
he invested money in, ' provided that it annoys the 
English,' so many persons do not care what they 



3o6 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE, 

invest belief in, provided that it irritates men of 
science. Just as rationally, some men of science 
denounce all investigation of the abnormal pheno- 
mena of which history and rumour are so full, 
because the research may bring hack distasteful 
beliefs, and revive the 'ancestral tendency" to super- 
stition. Yet the question is not whether the results 
of research may be dangerous, but whether the 
phenomena occur. The speculations of Copernicus, 
of Galileo, of the geologists, of Mr. Darwin, were 
' dangerous,' and it does not appear that they have 
added to the sum of human delight. But men of 
science are still happiest when denouncing the 'ob- 
scurantism ' of those who opposed Copernicus, Mr. 
Darwin, and the rest, in dread of the moral results. 
We owe the sirtig/orlifeur of M. Daudet to Mr. Dar- 
win and Mr. Alfred Wallace, and the stnigforlifeur 
is as dangerous and disagreeable as the half-crazy 
spiritualist. Science is only concerned with truth, 
not with the mischievous inferences which people 
may draw from truth. And yet certain friends of 
science, quite naturally and normally, fall back on 
the attitude of the opponents of Copernicus: 'These 
things,' they say, ' should not even be examined '. 

Such are the hostile and distracting influences, 
the contending currents, in the midst of which Reason 
has to operate as well as she can. Meanwhile every 
one of us probably supposes himself to be a model of 
pure reason, and if people would only listen to 
him, the measure of the universe. This happy and 
universal frame of mind is agreeably illustrated ii 
work by the late Comte Agenor de Gasparin, Les 



THE LOGIC OF TABLE-TL'RNING. 307 

Tables TaiirnanUr. (Deuxieme edition : Levy, Paris, 
1888). The firet edition is of 1854, and was published 
at a time of general excitement about 'table-turning' 
and 'spirit-rapping,' an excitement which only old 
people remember, and which it is amazing to read 
about. 

Modern spirit-rapping, of which table-turning is 
a branchj began, as we know, in 1847-48, A family 
of Methodists named Fox, entered, in 1847, on the 
tenancy of a house in Hydesville. in the State of New 
York. The previous occupants had been disturbed 
by ' knocking,' this continued in the Fox regime, 
one of the little girls found that the raps would 
answer (a discovery often made before) a system of 
alphabetic communication was opened, and spiritual- 
ism was launched.^ In March, 1853, a packet of 
American newspapers reached Bremen, and, as Dr. 
Andree wrote to the Gazette d'Augsbourg (March 30, 
1853), ail Bremen took to experiments in turning 
tables. The practice spread like a new disease, even 
men of science and academicians were puzzled, it is 
a fact that, at a breakfast party in Macaulay's rooms 
in the Albany, a long and heavy table became 
vivacious, to Macaulay's disgust, when the usual 
experiment was tried. Men of science were, in some 
cases, puzzled, in others believed that a new force 
must be recognised, in others talked of unconscious 
pushing or of imposture. M. Babinet, a member of 
the Institute, writing in the Revue des Deux Mondes 
(May, 1854), explained the 'raps 'or percussive noises, 

* An account of ihe method by which the Miss Foves capped ia 
given, by a cousin of theirs, in Dr. Carpenter's Mesmerism (p 150). 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

as the result of ventriloquism ! A similar explanation 
was ur^cd, and withdrawn, in the case oi the Cock 
Lane ghost, and it does not appear that M. Babinet 
produced a ventriloquist who coutd do the trick. 
Raps may be counterfeited in many ways, but hardly 
by ventriloquism. The raps were, in Europe, a later 
phenomenon than the table-turning, and aroused far 
more interest. The higher clergj- investigated the 
matter, and the Bishop of Mans in a charge, set 
down the phenomena to the agency of some kind of 
spirits, with whom Christian men should have no 
commerce. Granting the facts, the bishop was 
undeniably right. 

There was published at that time a journal 
called La Table Parlank, which contained recitals 
of phenomena, correspondence, and so forth. Among 
the narratives, that of a M. Benezet was typical, 
and is curious. In recent years, about 1872-80, 
the Rev. Mr. Stainton Moses, a clergyman and 
scholar of the best moral reputation, believed him- 
self to be the centre of extraordinary, and practi- 
cally incredible, occurrences, a belief shared by J 
observers among his friends. M. Benezet's narrative I 
is full of precisely parallel details. M. Benezet lived I 
at Toulouse, in 1853 : and his experiences had for 1 
their scene his own house, and that of his relations, 
M. and Mmc. L. The affair began in table-turning I 
and table-tilting; the tilts indicated the presence of '1 
'spirits,' which answered questions, right or wrong: 
under the hands of the L.'s the table became viva- 1 
cious, and chased a butterfly. Then the spirit said I 
it could appear as an old lady, who was vievredl 



THE LOGIC OF TABLE-TURNING. 309 

by one of the children. The L.'s being alarmed, 
gave up making experiments, but one day, at dinner, 
thumps were struck on the table. M. Benezet was 
called in, and heard the noises with awe. He went 
away, but the knocks sounded under the chair of 
Mme. L., she threw some holy water under the chair, 
when her thumb was bitten, and marks of teeth 
were left on it. Presently her shoulder was bitten, 
whether on a place which she could reach with 
her teeth or not, we are not informed. Raps went 
on, the L.'s tied to M, Benezet's house, which was 
instantly disturbed in the same fashion. Objects 
were spirited away, and reappeared as oddly as they 
had vanished. Packets of bonbons turned up un- 
beknown, sailed about the room, and suddenly fell 
on the table at dinner. The L.'s went back to their 
own house, where their hats and boots contracted a 
habit of floating dreamily about in the air. Things 
were hurled at them, practical jokes were played, 
and in September these monstrous annoyances 
gradually ceased. The most obvious explanation is 
that Mme. L. demoralised by turning tables, took, 
consciously or. unconsciously, to imitating the tricks 
of which history and legend are full. Her modus 
operandi, in some phenomena, is difficult to con- 
jecture. 

While opinion was agitated by these violent 
events, and contending hypotheses, while La Table 
Parlante took a Catholic view, and Science a negative 
view, M. Ag6nor de Gasparin, a Protestant, chose a 
via media. 

M. de Gasparin, the husband of the well-known 



310 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 




author of The Near and llie Heavenly Horizons, ' 
a table-turner, without being a spiritualist, 
experiments were made in Switzerland, in 1853 ; 
published a book on them, as we said; M. Figuie 
attacked it in Lcs MysUres dc la Science, after M. 
de Gasparin's death, and the widow of the author re- 
plied by republishing part of the original work. M. 
de Gasparin, in the early Empire, was a Liberal, ; 
anli-Kadical, an opponent of negro slavery, a Chris 
tian, an energetic honest man, absolu el ardent, as hi 
confesses. 

His purpose was to demonstrate that tables tun 
that the phenomenon is purely physical, that it canno 
be explained by the mechanical action of the muscle^ 
nor by that of 'spirits'. His allies were his persona 
friends, and it is pretty clear that two ladies were thf 
chief 'agents'. The process was conducted thu: 
'chain' of eight or ten people surrounded a table 
lightly resting their fingers, all in contact, on it 
surface. It revolved, and, by request, would rais 
one of its legs, and tap the floor. All this, of course 
can be explained either by cheating;, or by the unco 
scions pushes administered. If any one will place l 
hands on a light table, he will find that the mer 
come and go of pulse and breath have a tendency H 
agitate the object. It moves a little, accompanyii^ 
it you unconsciously move it more. The experiment 
is curious because, on some days, the table will not 
budge, on others it instantly sets up a peculiar ghd 
ing movement, in which it almost seems to escapi 
from the superimposed hands, while the most wakefu 
attention cannot detect any conscious action of thi 



THE LOOIC OF TABLE-TURNING. 3II 

muscles. If you try the opposite experiment, namely 
conscious pushing of the most gradual kind, you 
find that the exertion is very distinctly sensible. 
The author has made the following simple experi- 
ment. 

Two persons for whom the table would not move 
laid their hands on it firmly and flatly. Two others 
(for whom it danced) just touched the hands of the 
former pair. Any pressure or push from the upper 
hands would be felt, of course, by the under hands. 
No such pressure was felt, yet the table began to 
rotate. In another experiment with another subject, 
the pressure was felt (indeed the owner of the upper 
hands was conscious of pressing), yet the table did 
not move- These experiments are, physiologically, 
curious, but, of course, they demonstrate nothing. 
Muscles can move the table, muscles can apparently 
act without the consciousness of their owner, there- 
fore the movement is caused, or may be irrefutably 
said to be caused, by unconscious muscular action, 

M. de Gasparin, of course, was aware of all this; 
he therefore aimed at producing movement without 
contact. In his early experiments the table was first 
set agoing by contact ; all hands were then lifted at 
a signal, to half an inch above the table, and still the 
table revolved. Of course it will not do this, if it is 
set agoing by conscious muscular action, as any one 
may prove by trying. As it was possible that some 
one might still be touching the table, and escaping 
in the crowd the notice of the observers outside the 
circle, two ladies tried alone. The observer, Mr. 
Thury, saw the daylight between their hands and the 



312 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 



I( table, which revolved four or five times. To make 
assurance doubly sure, a thin coating of flour was 
scattered over the whole table, and still it moved, while 
the flour was unmarked. M. de Gasparin was there- 
fore convinced that the phenomena of movement with- 
out mechanical agency were real. His experiments 
got rid of Mr. Faraday's theory of unconscious 
pressure and pushing, because you cannot push with 
your muscles what you do not touch with any por- 
tion of your body, and De Gasparin had assured him- 

', self that there was no physical contact between his 

\ friends and this table. 

M, de Gasparin now turned upon Dr. Carpenter, to 
whom an article in the Quarterly Review, dealing with 
the whole topic of abnormal occurrences, was attri- 
buted. Dr. Carpenter, at this time, had admitted the 
existence of the hypnotic state, and the amenability of 
the hypnotised person to the wildest suggestions. He 
had also begun to develop his doctrine of ' unconscious 
cerebration,' that is, the existence of mental pro- 
cesses beneath, or apart from our consciousness.' 
An ' ideational change ' may take place in the cere- 
brum. The sensorium is ' unreceptive," so the idea 

\ does not reach consciousness. Sometimes, how- 
■ ever, the idea oozes out from the fingers, through 
muscular action, also unconscious. This moves the 
table to the appropriate tilts. These two ideas are 
capable, if we admit them, of explaining many 
singular psychological facts, but they certainly do 



' See Dt. Carpenter's brief and lucid statement about * Latent 
Thought' and 'Unconscious Cerebration,' in the ^Hnricr/j' Rt-uicw, 
vol. cxMi. pp. 316-319. 



THE LOGIC OP TABLE-TURNING. 313 

not explain the movements of tables which nobody 
is touching. In face of M. de Gasparin's evidence, 
which probably was not before him, Dr. Carpenter 
could only have denied the facts, or alleged that the 
witnesses, including observers outside the chains, or 
circle, were all self-hypnotised, all under the influ- 
ence of self-suggestion, and all honestly asserting the 
occurrence of events which did not occur. His essay 
touched but lightly on this particular marvel. He 
remarked that ' the turning of tables, and the sup- 
posed communications of spirits through their agency ' 
are due * to the mental state of the performers them- 
selves'. Now M. de Gasparin, in his via media, re- 
pudiated ' spirits ' energetically. Dr. Carpenter then 
explained witchcraft, and the vagaries of 'camp- 
meetings' by the 'dominant idea'. But M. de Gas- 
parin could reply that persons whose ' dominant idea ' 
was incredulity attested many singular occurrences. 
At the end of his article. Dr. Carpenter decides that 
table-turners push unconsciously, as they assuredly 
do, but they cannot push when not in contact with 
the object. The doctor did not allege that table- 
turners are 'biologised' as he calls it, and und^ a 
glamour. But M. de Gasparin averred that no single 
example of trance, rigidity, loss of ordinary conscious- 
ness, or other morbid symptoms, had ever occurred 
in his experiments. There is thus, as it were, no 
common ground on which he and Dr. Carpenter can 
meet and fight. He dissected the doctor's rather in- 
consequent argument with a good deal of acuteness 
and wit. 

M. de Gasparin then exhibited some of the 



314 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

besettins sins of all who indulge in argument. He 
accepted all his own private phenomena, but none 

of those, such as ' raps ' and so forth, for which other 
people were vouching. Things must occur as he 
had seen them, and not otherwise. What he had 
seen was a chalne of people surrounding a table, all 
in contact with the table, and with each other. The 
table had moved, and had answered questions by 
knocking the floor with its foot. It had also moved, 
when the hands were held close to it, but not in 
contact with it. Nothing beyond that was orthodox, 
as nothing beyond hypnotism and unconscious cere- 
bration was orthodox with Dr. Carpenter. Moreover 
M. de Gasparin had his own physical explanation of 
the phenomena. There is, in man's constitution, a 
'fluid' which can be concentrated by his will, and 
which then, given a table and a chalne, will produce 
M. de Gasparin's phenomena; but no more. He 
knows that " fluids ' are going ont of fashion in science, 
and he is ready to call the 'fluid' the 'force' or 
' agency,' or ' condition of matter ' or what you please. 
' Substances, forces, vibrations, let it be what you 
choose, as long as it is something.' The objection 
that the phenomena are 'of no use' was made, and 
is still very common, but, of course, is in no case 
scientifically valid. Electricity was ' of no use ' once, 
and the most useless phenomenon is none the less 
worthy of examination. 

M. de Gasparin now examines another class of 
objections. First, the phenomena were denied ; next, 
they were said to be as old as history, and famiUar to 
the Greeks, Wc elsewhere show that this is quite true, 



THE LOGIC OF TABLE-TURNING. 315 

thai the movement of objects without contact was as 
familiar to the Greeks as to the Peruvians, the 
Thibetans, the Eskimo, and in modem stories of 1 
haunted houses. But, as will presently appear, these 
wilder facts would by no means coalesce with the 
hypothesis of M, de Gasparin. To his mind, tables 
turn, but they turn by virtue of the will of a ' circle,' 
consciously exerted, through the means of some 
physical force, fluid, or what not, produced by the 
imposition of hands. Now these processes do not 
characterise the phenomena among Greeks, Tht- ' 
betans, Eskimo, Peruvians, in haunted houses, or in 
presence of Home and Eusapia Paladino, — granting 
the facts as alleged. In these instances, nobody is 
' circling' round a chair, a bed, or what not, yet the 
chair or bed moves, as in the story of Monsieur S. at 
St, Maur (1706), and in countless other examples. 
All this would not, as we shall see, be convenient for 
the theory of M. de Gasparin. 

His line of argument is that the Greek and Latin 
texts are misunderstood, but that, if the Greeks did 
turn tables, that is no proof that tables do not turn, 
but rather the reverse. A favourite text is taken 
from Ammianus Marcellinus. lib. xxix. ch. i. M. de 
Gasparin does not appear to have read the passage 
carefully. About 371 a.d. one Hilarius was tortured 
on a charge of magical operations against the Em- 
peror Valens. He confessed. A little table, made 
of Delphic laurel, was produced in court, ' We 
made it,' he said, ' that confounded little table, under 
strange rites and imprecations, and we set it in 
movement, thus: it was placed in a room charged 



3l6 COCK LANB AND COMMON-SENSE. 

with perfumes, above a round plate fashioned of 
various metals. The edge of the plate was marked 
with the letters of the alphabet separated by certain 
spaces. A priest, linen clad, bowed himself over the 
table, balancing a ring tied to a thin thread. The 
ring, bounding from letter to letter, picks out letters 
forming hexameters, like those of Delphi.' This is 
confusing. Probably the movements of the table, 
communicated to the thread, caused the bounds of 
the ring, otherwise there was no use in the table 
moving. At all events the ring touched Theo (which 
is not a word that could begin a hexameter) when 
they asked who was to succeed Valens, Some one 
called out ' Theodore ' and they pursued the experi- 
ment no farther. A number of Theodores and 
Theophiles were put to death, but when Theodosius 
was joined with Gratian in the Empire, the believers 
held that the table had been well inspired. Here 
there was no chains, or circle, the table is not said to 
lever le pied legerement, as the song advises, therefore 
M. de Gasparin rules the case out of court. The 
object, however, really was analogous to planchette, 
Ouija, and other modern modes of automatic divina- 
tion. The experiment of Hilarius with the 'con- 
founded little table' led to a massacre of Neoplatonists, 
martyrs of Psychical Research I In Hilarius's con- 
fession we omit a set of ritual invocations; as 
unessential as the mystic rites used by savages in 
making curari. 

Thes^m(«s/ie«M(iCKS,or 'rapping spirit '(?)conjured 
away by old Catholic formula at the benediction of 
churches, was brought forward by some of M. de 



THE LOGIC OF TABLE-TURNING, 317 

Gasparin's critics. As /m tables did not rap, he had 
nothing to do with the spirittis percuticns, who proves, 
however, that the Church was acquainted with raps, 
and explained them by the spirituaHstic hypothesis,' 

A text in Tertuliian's Apologetic was also cited. 
Here iabules and caprce, 'tables and she-goats,' are said 
to divine. What have she-goats to do in the matter? 
De Morgan wished to read tabulce et crcp^, which he 
construes 'tables and raps,' but he only finds crepce 
in Festus, who says, that goats are called crepce, quod 
cruribus crepent, ' because they rattle with their legs '. 
De Morgan's guess is ingenious, but lacks confir- 
\ mation. We are not, so far, aware of communi- 
I cation with spirits by raps before 856 a.d. 

Finally, M. de Gasparin denies that his re- 
searches are 'superstitious'. Will can move my 
limbs, if it also moves my table, what is there super- 
stitious in that ? It is a new fact, that is all. 
'Tout est si materiel, si physique dans les experi- 
ences des tables.' It was not so at Toulouse ! 

Meanwhile M. de Gasparin, firm in his 'Trewth,' 
— ^the need of a chaine of persons, the physical origin 
of the phenomena, the entire absence of spirits, — 
was so unlucky, when he dealt with 'spirits,' as to 
drop into the very line of argument which he had 
been denouncing. 'Spirits' are 'superstitious,' — 
well, his adversaries had found superstition in his 
own experiments and beliefs. To believe that spirits 

' A learned priest has kindly looked for the ailegcd tpmtut 
pcrculiiHS in dedicatory and olher ecclesiaGtical formulse. He only 
finds il in benedictions of bridal chambers, and thinks it refers to the 
slaying spirit in the Book of Tobit. 



[ AND COMMON-SBNSG. 

are engaged, is 'to reduce our relations with the 
invisible world to the grossest detinition '. But 
why not. as we know nothing about our relations 
with the invisible world ? The theology of the 
spirits is 'contrary to Scripture': very well, your 
tales of tables moved without contact are contrary 
to science. ' No spiritualistic story has ever been 
told which is not to be classed among the phenomena 
of animal magnetism. . . ,' This, of course, is a 
mere example of a statement made without examina- 
tion, a sin alleged by M. de Gasparin against his 
opponents. Vast numbers of such stones, not expli- 
cable by the now rejected theory of " animal mag- 
netism,' have certainly been told. 

In another volume M. de Gasparin demolished 
the tales, but he was only at the beginning of his 
subject. The historical and anthropological evi- 
dence for the movement of objects without contact, 
not under his conditions, is very vast in bulk- The 
modern experiments are sometimes more scientific 
than his own, and the evidence for the most startling 
events of all kinds is quite as good as that on which 
he relies for his prodigies, themselves sufficiently 
startling. His hypothesis, at all events, of will 
directing a force or fluid, by no means explains 
phenomena quite as well provided with evidence as 
his own. So M. de Gasparin disposes of the rival 
miracles as the result of chance, imposture, or hallu- 
cination, the very weapons of his scientific adver- 
saries. His own prodigies he has seen, and is 
satisfied. His opponents say : ' You cannot register 
your force sur I'inclinaison d'une aiguille'. He 



\ 



THE LOGIC OF TABLE-TURNING. 319 

could not. but Home could do so to the satisfaction 
of a scientific expert, and probably M. de Gasparin 
would have believed it, if he had seen it. M. de 
Gasparin is horrified at the idea of ' trespassing on 
the territory of acts beyond our power'. But, if it 
were possible to do the miracles of Home, it would 
be possible because it is not beyond our power. ' The 
spiritualistic opinion is opposed to the doctrine of the 
resurrection : it merely announces the immortality 
of the soul.' But that has nothing to do with the 
matter in hand. 

The theology of spirits, of course, is neither here 
nor there. A ' spirit ' will say anything or everything. 
But Mr. C C. Massey when he saw a chair move at 
a word (and even without one), in the presence of 
such a double-dyed impostor as Slade, had as much 
right to beiieve his own eyes as M. de Gasparin, and 
what he saw does not square with M. de Gasparin's 
private 'Trewth', The chair in Mr. Massey's ex- 
perience, was 'unattached' to a piece of string; it 
fell, and, at request, jumped up again, and approached 
Mr. Massey, 'just as if some one had picked it up in 
order to take a seat beside me '} 

Such were the idola specus, the private personal pre- 
possessions of M. de Gasparin, undeniably an honour- 
able man. Now, in 1877, his old adversary, Dr, Car- 
penter, C.B.. M.D., LL.D., F.R.S.. F.G.S., V.P.L.S., 
corresponding member of the Institute of France, tout 
cequ'Uy adepiua oJJkicl,d£ plus decore, returned to the 
charge. He published a work on Mesmerism, Spiritu- 
alism, etc.^ Perhaps the unscientific reader supposes 

' S. p. R., X, 8i. 'London : Longmans, Green, & Co., 1S77. 



323 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 



that Dr. Carpenter replied to the ar^ments of M.de 
Gasparin? This would have been sportsmanlike, but 
no, Dr. Carpenter firmly ignored them ! He devoted 
three pages to table-turning (pp. 96, 97, 98). He exhi- 
bited Mr, Faraday's little machine for detectingmuscu- 
lar pressure, a machine which would also detect pres- 
sure which is not muscular. He explained answers 
given by lilts, answers not consciously known to the 
operators, as the results of unconscious cerebration. 
People may thus get answers which they do expect, 
or answers which they do not expect, as may happen. 
But not one word did Dr. Carpenter say to a popular 
audience at the London Institution about M. de 
Gasparin's assertion, and the assertion of M. de 
Gasparin's witnesses, that motion had been observed 
without any contact at all. He might, if he pleased, 
have alleged that M, de Gasparin and the others 
fabled ; or that they were self-hypnotised, or were 
cheated, but he absolutely ignored the evidence alto- 
gether. Now this behaviour, if scientific, was hardly 
quite sportsmanlike, to use a simple British phrase 
which does credit to our language and national 
character, Mr. Alfred Wallace stated a similar con- 
clusion as to Dr. Carpenter's method of argument, 
in language of some strength. ' Dr. Carpenter,' he 
said, ' habitually gives only one side of the question, 
■ and completely ignores all facts which tell against 
his theory.'^ Without going so far as Mr. Wallace, 
and alleging that what Dr. Carpenter did in the case 
of M. de Gasparin, he did 'habitually,' we may 

'Quoted by Dr. Carpenter, op. ci(., 



THE LOGIC OF TABLE-TUKNING. 32I 

briefly examine some portions of his book which, 
perhaps, leave something to be desired. It is written 
with much acuteness, with considerable fairness, and 
is certainly calculated to convince any reader who 
has not been perplexed by circumstances on which 
Dr. Carpenter throws little light. 

Our own chief perplexity is the continuity and 1 
uniformity of the historical and anthropological 
evidence for certain marvels. We have already ' 
shown the difficulty of attributing this harmony of 
evidence, first to savage modes of thought, and then 
to their survival and revival. The evidence, in full 
civilisation, ancient and modern, of educated and even 
sceptical witnesses to phenomena, which are usu- 
ally grotesque, but are always the same everywhere, 
in every age and land, and the constant attend- 
ance of these phenomena on persons of a pecuhar 
temperament, are our stumbling-blocks on the 
path to absolute negation. Epilepsy, convulsions, 
hysterical diseases are startling affairs, we admit. It 
was natural that savages and the ignorant should 
attribute them to diabolical possession, and then look 
out for, and invent, manifestations of the diabolical 
energy outside the body of the patient, say in move- 
ments of objects, knocks, and so forth. As in these 
maladies the patient may be subject to hallucinations, 
it was natural that savages or ignorant men, or 
polytheists, or ardent Catholics, or excitable Cove- 
nanters, should regard these hallucinations as 'lucid' 
or 'clairvoyant'. A few lucky coincidences would 
establish this opinion among such observers as we 
have indicated, while failures of lucidity would not 



322 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

be counted. The professional epileptic medicine- 
man, moreover, would strengthen his case by ' pro- 
phesying on velvet,' like Noma of the Fitful Head, 
on private and early information. Imposture would 
imitate the 'spiritual' feats of 'raps,' 'physical 
movements of objects,' and 'luminous forms'. All 
this would continue after savagery, after paganism, 
after ' Popery' among the peasants who were for so 
long, and in superstition are even now, a conservative 
class. 

All that ' expectancy,' hysterics, ' the dominant 
idea ' and rude hypnotism, ' the sleep of the shadow,' 
could do, would be done, as witch trials show. All 
these elements in folk-lore, magic and belief would 
endure, in the peasant class, under the veneer of 
civilisation. Now and again these elements of 
superstition would break through the veneer, would 
come to the surface among the educated classes, and 
would 'carry silly women captive,' and silly men. 
They, too, though born in the educated class, would 
attest impossible occurrences. 

In all this, we might only see survival, wonder- 
fully vivacious, and revival astonishingly close to the. 
ancient savage lines. 

We are unable to state the case for survival and 
revival more strenuously, and the hypothesis is most 
attractive. This hypothesis appears to be Dr. 
Carpenter's, though he does not, in the limits of 
popular lectures, unfold it at any length. After 
stating (p. i) that a continuous belief in 'occult 
agencies ' has existed, he adds : — 

'While this very continuity is maintained by 



THE LOGIC OF TABLB-TURNING. 333 

some to be an evidence of the real existence of such 
[occult] agencies, it will be my purpose to show you 
that it proves nothing more than the wide-spread 
diffusion, alike amongst minds of the highest and 
lowest culture, of certain tendencies to thought, 
which have either created ideal marvels possessing 
no foundation whatever in fact, or have, by exaggera- 
tion and distortion, invested with a preternatural 
character occurrences which are perfectly capable of 
a natural explanation '. 

Here Dr. Carpenter does not attempt to show 
cause why the ' manifestations ' are always the same, 
for example, why spirits rap in the Australian Bush, 
among blacks not influenced by modern spiritualism : 
why tables moved, untouched, in Thibet and India, 
long before ' table-turning' was heard of in modem 
Europe. We have filled up the lacuna in the 
doctor's argument, by suggesting that the pheno- 
mena (which are not such as a civilised taste would 
desire) were invented by savages, and handed on in 
an unbroken catena, a chain of tradition. 

But, in following fJr. Carpenter, we are brought 
up short at one of our old obstacles, we trip on one 
of our old stumbling-blocks. Granting that an 
epileptic patient made strange bounds and springs, 
we can conceive savages going farther in fancy, and 
averring that he flew, or was levitated, or miracu- 
lously transported through space. Let this become 
matter of traditional belief, as a thing possible in epi- 
lepsy, i.e., in 'diabolical,' or 'angelical possession'. 
Add the honest but hallucinatory persuasion of the 
patient that he was so levitated, and let him be a 



COCK LAJJE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

penon of honour and of sanctity, say St. Theresa, St. 
Francis, or St. Joseph of Cupertino. Granting the 
survival of a savage exajjgeration, granting the hallu- 
cinated saint, we may, perhaps, explain the innumer- 
able anecdotes about miraculous levitation of which 
a few are repeated in our paper on ' Comparative 
Psychical Research. ' The witnesses in witch trials, 
and in ecclesiastical inquiries, and Lord Orrery, and 
Mr. Greatrakes, and the Cromwellian soldien,' in 
Scotland, the Spanish in Peru, Cotton Mather in 
New Enjjland, saw what they expected to see, what 
tradition taught them to look for, in the case of a 
convulsionary, or a saint, or a catechumen. The 
consensus in illusion was wonderful, but let us 
grant, for fhe sake of argument, that it was 
possible. Let us add another example, from Cocbiaj 
China. 

The witness and narrator is Delacourt, a Frencli| 
missionary. The source is a letter of his of Novemlx 
25, 1738, to Winslow the anatomist, Membre d^ 
I'Academie des Sciences k Paris. It is printed i 
the ImiituHoncs Theologias of Collet, who attests th( 
probity of the missionary.^ 

In May or June, 1733, Delacourt was asked I 
view a young native Christian, said by his friends tS 
be ' possessed '. 

' Rather incredulous,' as he says, Delacourt wend 
to the lad, who had communicated, as he believed^ 
unworthily, and was therefore a prey to religiotu 
excitement, which, as Bishop Callaway found amonj 



'Tom. ii. pp. 3:1, 435, edition of 1.758. 



THE LOGIC OF TABLE-TURNING. 325 

his Zulu converts, and as Wodrow attests among 
'savoury Christians,' begets precisely such halluci- 
nations as annoyed the early hermits like St. Anthony. 
Delacourt addressed the youth in Latin : he replied, 
Ego nescio loqui Latins, a tag which he might easily 
have picked up, let us say. Delacourt led him into 
church, where the patient was violently convulsed. 
Delacourt then (remembering the example set by 
the Bishop of Tilopolia) ordered the demon in Latin, 
to carry the boy to the ceiling. " His body became 
stiff, he was dragged from the middle of the church 
to a pillar, and there, his feet joined, his back fixed 
{coUe) against the pillar, he was transported in the 
twinkling of an eye to the ceiHng, like a weight 
rapidly drawn up, without any apparent action on 
his part. I kept him in the air for half an hour, 
and then bade him drop without hurting himself,' 
when he fell ' like a packet of dirty linen '. While 
he was up aloft, Delacourt preached at him in 
Latin, and he became, ' perhaps the best Christian 
in Cochin China ', 

Dr. Carpenter's explanation must either be that 
Delacourt lied ; or that a tradition, surviving from 
savagery, and enforced by the example of the Bishop 
of Tilopolis. made a missionary, m« peu incridule, as 
he says, believe that h^ saw, and watched for half an 
hour, a phenomenon which he never saw at alt. But 
then Dr. Carpenter also dismisses, with none but the 
general theory already quoted, the experience of 'a 
nobleman of high scientific attainments,* who 'seri- 
ously assures us' that he saw Home 'sail in the 
air, by moonlight, out of one window and in at 



326 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

another, at the height of seventy feet from tHI 
ground '.• 

Here is the stumbling-block. A nobleman 
high scientific attainment, in company with another 
nobleman, and a captain in the army, all vouched 
for this performance of Home. Now could the 
savage tradition, which attributes flight to convi 
sive and entranced persons, exercise such an iofli 
ence on these three educated modern witnessew 
could an old piece of folk-lore, in company win 
'expectancy,' so wildly delude them? Can 'hig 
scientific attainments' leave their possessor win 
such humble powers of observation ? But, to be 
sure. Dr. Carpenter does not tell his readers that 
there were thi'ee witnesses. Dr. Carpenter says that, 
if we believe Lord Crawford (and his friends), we can 
' have no reason for refusing credit to the historical 
evidence of the demoniacal elevation of Simon 
Magus ". Let us point out that we have no con- 
temporary evidence at all about Simon's feat, while 
for Home's, we have the evidence of three living and 
honourable men, whom Dr. Carpenter might have 
cross-examined. The doings of Home and of Simon 
were parallel, but nothing can be more different than. _ 
the nature of the evidence for what they are said I 

' In the Quarterly Reviea, vol. cxxxi. pp. 336-337, Dr. CarpentM 
criticisei! an account fjiven by Lord Crawford of this perform: 
He asks for the evidence of the other witnesses. This was supplie| 
He detects a colloquial slovenliness in a pluase. Tl ~ 
up. He complains ihat the light was moonUght. ' 
shining full into ihe room.' Surely the light was g 
see whether a man did or did not go out of an open window. Ha^fl 
he been a burglar, the light would have been reckoned adequate. 



THE LOGIC OF TABLE-TURNING. 



327 



have done. This, perhaps, mi^ht have been patent 
to a man like Dr. Carpenter of 'early scientific 
training;'. But he illustrated his own doctrine of 
'the dominant idea'; he did not see that he was 
guilty of a fallacy, because his 'idea' dominated him. 
Stumbling into as deep a gulf, Dr. Carpenter put 
Lord Crawford's evidence (he omitted that of his 
friends) on a level with, or below, the depositions of 
witnesses as to 'the aerial transport of witches to 
attend their demoniacal festivities'. But who ever 
swore that he saw witches so transported ? The evi- 
dence was not to witnessed facts, but only to a 
current belief, backed by confessions under tor- 
ture. No testimony could be less on a par with that 
of a living 'nobleman of high scientific attainments,' 
to his own experience. 

In three pages Dr. Carpenter has shown that 
' early scientific training ' in physiology and pathology, 
does not necessarily enable its possessor to state a 
case fully. Nor does it prompt him to discriminate 
between rumours coming, a hundred and fifty years 
after the date of the alleged occurrences, from a re- 
mote, credulous, and unscientific age: and the state- 
ments of witnesses all living, all honourable, and. in 
one case, of ' high scientific attainments '.' 

It is this solemn belief in his own infallibility as a ' 
judge of evidence combined with his almost incredible 
ignorance of what evidence is, that makes Dr. Car- 
penter such an amusing controversialist. 

If any piece of fact is to be proved, it is plain that 

' Lord Crawford's evidence is in the Report 0/ l/ic Dialnlkai 
Sociiiy, p. 214. 



320 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

the concurrent testimony of three living and honour-^ 
able men is worth more than a bit of gossip, which, 
after filtering through a century or two, is reported 
by an early Christian Father. In matters wholly 
marvellous, like Home's flight in the air, the evidence 
of three living and honourable men need not, of 
course, convince us of the fact. But this evidence 
is in itself a fact to be considered— 'Why do these 
gentlemen tell this tale ? ' we ask ; but Dr. Carpen- 
ter puts the testimony on the level of patristic tattl& 
many centuries old, written down, on no authority^ 
long after the event. Yet the worthy doctol 
calmly talks about 'want of scientific culture pre- 
venting people from appreciating the force of s 
tific reasoning,' and that after giving such examples 
of 'scientific reasoning' as we have examined.' IV\ 
is in this way that Science makes herself disliked. Bw 
aid of ordinary intelligence, and of an ordinary classi^ 
cal education, every one (however uncultivated i 
'science') can satisfy himself that Dr. Carpentei 
argued at random. Yet we do not assert that ' earlj^ 
scientific training' prevents people from understanding 
the nature of evidence. Dr. Carpenter had the 
training, but he was impetuous, and under a dominant 
idea, so he blundered along. 

Dr. Carpenter frequently invokes for the explana 
tion of marvels, a cause which is vera causa, expect 
ancy. 'The expectation of a certain result is often 
enough to produce it ' (p. 12). This he proves by casea 
of hypnotised patients who did, or suffered, what thej 



len- 
ttl^^ 

ity^l 

pre-™ 
pies 

.SSM^H 



'Qiiarlerly Revict 



THE LOGIC OP TABLE-TURNING. 329 

expected to be ordered to suffer or do, though no 
such order was really given to them. Again (p. 40) he 
urges that imaginative people, who sit for a couple 
of hours, 'especially if in the dark,' believing or 
hoping to see a human body, or a table, rise in the 
air, probably ' pass into a state which is neither 
sleeping nor waking, but between the two, in which 
they see, hear, or feel by touch, anything they have 
been led to expect will present itself. 

This is, indeed, highly probable. But we must 
suppose that ali present fail into this ambiguous state, 
described of old by Porphyry, One waking spectator 
who sees nothing would make the statements of the 
others even more worthless than usual. And it is 
certain that it is.not even pretended that all, always, 
see the same phenomena. 

' One saw an arm, and one a hand, and one the 
waving of a gown,' in that seance at Branxholme, 
where only William of Deloraine beheld all, 



Granting the ambiguous state, granting darkness, 
and expectancy, anything may seem to happen. 
But Dr, Carpenter wholly omits such cases as that 
of Mr. Hamilton Aide, and of M. Alphonse Karr. 
Both were absolutely sceptical. Both disliked Home 
very much, and thought him an underbred Yankee 

1 Obseive Ihe caution of the MosaUoopeT, even in ihat agitating 
moment I Mow good it is. and how wonderfully Sir Waltei forecasts 



330 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 



quack and charlatan. Both were in the 'expect- 
ancy' of seeing no marvels, were under 'the domi- 
nant idea' that nothing unusual would occur. Both. 
in a brilliantly lighted room of a villa near Nice, saw 
a chair make a rush from the wall into the middle of 
the room, and saw a very large and heavy table, 
untouched, rise majestically in the air. M. Karr at 
once got under the table, and hunted, vainly, for 
mechanical appliances. Then he and Mr. Aidfi went 
home, disconcerted, and in very bad humour. How 
do 'expectancy' and the 'dominant idea' explain, 
this experience, which Mr. Aide has published in the 
Nineteenth Century ? The expectancy and dominant 
ideas of these gentlemen should have made them 
see the table and chair sit tight, while believers ob- 
served them in active motion. Again, how could Mr. 
Crookes's lack of ' a special training in the bodily and 
mental constitution, abnormal as well as normal,' 
of 'mediums,' affect his power of observing whether 
a plank of wood did, or did not, move to a certain 
extent untouched, or slightly touched, and whether 
the difference of position was, or was not, registered 
mechanically ? (p. 70). It was a pure matter of 
skilled and trained observation in mechanics. Dr. 
Huggins was also present at this experiment in a 
mode of motion. Him Dr. Carpenter gracefully dis- 
credited as an 'amateur,' without 'a broad basis of 
general scientific culture'. He had devoted himself 
'to a branch of research which tasks the keenest 
powers of observation '. • Now it was precisely powei 
of observation that were required. ' There are 
sources of error,' of which a mere observer like Di 



I 



THE LOGIC OF TABLE-TORNING. 33I 

Huggins would be unaware. And 'one of the most 
potent of these is a proclivity to believe in the reality 
of spiritual communications,' particularly dangerous 
in a case where 'spiritual communications,' were 
not in question ! The question was, did an indicator 
move, or not, under a certain amount of pressure? 
Indiscreetly enough, to be sure, the pressure was 
attributed to ' psychic force,' and perhaps that was 
what Dr. Carpenter had in his mind, when he warned 
Dr. Huggins against ' the proclivity to believe in the 
reality of spiritual communications'. 

About a wilderness of other phenomena, attested 
by scores of sane people, from Lord Crawford to Mr. 
S. C. Hall, Dr. Carpenter 'left himself no time to 
speak' (p. 105). This was convenient, but the lack 
of time prevented Dr. Carpenter from removing our 
stumbling-block, the one obstacle which keeps us 
from adopting, with no shadow of doubt, the theory 
that explains all the mar\'els by the survival and 
revival of savage delusions. Dr. Carpenter's hypo- 
thesis of expectancy, of a dominant idea, acting on 
believers, in an ambiguous state, and in the dark, 
can do much, but it cannot account for the experi- ' 
ence of wide-awake sceptics, under the opposite 
dominant idea, in a brilliant light. 

Dr. Carpenter exposed and exploded a quantity 
of mesmeric spiritualistic myths narrated by Dr. 
Gregory, by Miss Martineau, and by less respectable 
if equally gullible authorities. But, speaking merely 
as perplexed and unconvinced students of argument 
and evidence, we cannot say that he removed the 
difficulties which have been illustrated and described. 



i . 

! 



1 



I'. ' 



332 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

Table-turning, after what is called a * boom ' in 
1853-60, is now an abandoned amusement. It is 
deserted, like croquet, and it is even less to be 
regretted. But its existence enabled disputants to 
illustrate the ordinary processes of reasoning ; each 
making assertions up to the limit of his personal 
experience; each attacking, as 'superstitious,' all 
who had seen, or fancied they had seen, more than 
himself, and each fighting gallantly for his own 
explanatory hypothesis, which never did explain any 
phenomena beyond those attested by his own senses. 
The others were declared not to exist, or to be the 
result of imposture and mal-observation, — and per- 
haps they were. 

The truly diverting thing is that Home did not 
believe in the other * mediums,' nor in anything in 
the way of a marvel (such as matter passing 
through matter) which he had not seen with his 
own eyes. Whether Home's incredulity should be 
reckoned as a proof of his belief in his own powers, 
might be argued either way. 




OF RELIGION. 

Evolutionary Theory of the Origin of Religion. Facts 
misunderstood suggest ghosts, which develop into gods. 
This process lies behind history and experience. Diffi- 
culties of the Theory. The Theory of Lucretius. 
Objections. Mr. Tylor's Theory. The question of 
abnormal facts not discussed by Mr, Tylor. Pos- 
sibility that such 'psychical' facts are real, and are 
elements in development of savage religion. The evidence 
for psychical phenomena compared with that which, 
in other matters, satisjies anthropologists. Examples. 
Conclusion. 

Among the many hypotheses as to the origin of re- 
ligion, that which we may call the evolutionary, or 
anthropological, is most congenial to modern habits 
of thought. The old belief in a sudden, miraculous 
revelation is commonly rejected, though, in one sense, 
religion was none the less ' revealed,' even if man was 
obliged to work his way to the conception of deity by 
degrees. To attain that conception was the neces- 
sary result of man's reflection on the sum of his re- 
lations to the universe. The attainment, however, of 
the monotheistic idea is not now generally regarded as 
immediate and instinctive. A slow advance, a pro- 
longed evolution was required, whether we accept Mr. 
Max Miiller's theory of 'the sense of the Infinite,' or 



334 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SBN^JE. 

whether we prefer the anthropological hypothesis] 
The latter scheme, with various modifications, is tl 
scheme of Epicurus, Lucretius, Hume, Mr. Tylor, am 
Mr. Herbert Spencer, Man half consciously trans 
ferred his implicit sense that he was a livingand rationi 
being to nature in general, and recognised that eartl 
sky, wind, clouds, trees, the lower animals, and so onj 
were persons like himself, persons perhaps moi 
powerful and awful than himself. This transferenci 
of personality can scarcely be called the result of 
conscious process of reasoning. Man might recognise 
personality everywhere, without much more thought 
or argument than a kitten exerts when it takes 
cork or a ball for a living playmate. But conscioui 
ness must have reached a more explicit stage, when' 
man began to ask himself what a. person is, what life is, 
and when he arrived at the conclusion that life is a 
spirit. To advance from that conclusion; to explain 
all life as the manifestation of indwelling spirits 
then to withdraw the conception of life and person- 
ality from inanimate things, to select from 
spirits One more powerful than the rest, to recognisi 
that One as disembodied, as superior, then as supremcj 
then as unique, and so to attain the monotheistii 
conception, has been, according to the evolutionary] 
hypothesis, the tendency of human thought. 

Unluckily we cannot study the process in it! 
course of action. Perhaps there is no savage 
lowly endowed, that it does not possess, in additioa] 
to a world of ' spirits,' something that answers to the! 
conception of God. Whether that is so, or not, is 
question of evidence. We have often been told thi 



s, 1 



GHOST THEORY OF THE ORIGIN OP RELIGION. 335 

this or the other people 'has no religious ideas at all '. 
But later we hear that they do possess a belief in spirits, 
and very often better information proves that, in one 
stage or other of advance or degradation, the theistic 
conception of a Maker and Judge of the world is also 
present. Meanwhile even civilised and monotheistic 
peoples also admit the existence of a world of spirits 
of the dead, of demons' {as in Platonism), of saints 
(as in Catholicism), of devils, of angels, or of subor- 
dinate deities. Thus the elements of religion are 
universally distributed in all degrees of culture, 
though one element is more conspicuous in one 
place or mood, another more conspicuous in another. 
In one mood the savage, or the civilised man, may 
be called monotheistic, in another mood atheistic, in 
a third, practically polytheistic. Only a few men 
anywhere, and they only when consciously engaged 
in speculation, assume a really definite and exclusive 
mental attitude on the subject. The orthodox 
monotheistic Mussulman has his afreets, and djinns; 
the Jew, or the Christian, has his angels; the 
Catholic has his saints ; the Platonist has his 
demons; Superstition has its ghosts. The question 
is whether all these spiritual beings are only ghosts 
raised to higher powers : or (in the case of deity), to 
the highest conceivable power, while, even when this 
last process has been accomplished, we ask whether 
other ghosts, on lower grades, continue to be recog- 
nised. Meanwhile the whole anthropological hypo- 
thesis, whether valid or invalid, lies behind history, 
behind the experience of even the most backward 
races at present extant. If it be urged, as by Hume, 



336 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

that the conception of a supreme deity is only 
reflection of kingship in human society, we rau! 
observe that some monarchical races, like the Azteci 
seem to have possessed no recognised monarchici 
Zeus; while something very like the monotheisti( 
conception is found among races so remote from thi 
monarchical state of society as to have no obvioi 
distinctions of rank, like the Australian blacks 
Moreover the evidence, on such difficult point! 
obscure, and fluctuating, and capable of various' 
interpretation. Even among the most backward 
peoples, the traceable shadow of a monotheistic idea 
often seems to bear marks of degradation and disuse, 
rather than of nascent development. There is a God, 
but He is neglected, and tribal spirits receive prayer 
and sacrifice. Just as in art there is a point where; 
we find it difficult to decide whether an object is d< 
cadent. or archaic, so it is in the study of religioi 
conceptions. 

These are a few among the inevitable difficulties 
and obscurities which haunt the anthropological or 
evolutionary theory of the origin of religion. Other 
difficulties meet us at the veiy beginning. The theory 
regards gods as merely ghosts or spirits, raised to a 
higher, or to the highest power. Mankind, accord- 
ing to the system, was inevitably led, by the action 
of reason upon apparent facts, to endow all things, 
from humanity itself to earth, sky, rain, sea, fire, 
with conscious personality, life, spirit ; and these 
attributes were as gradually withdrawn again, undi 
stress of better knowledge, till only man was 1( 
with a soul, and only the universe was left with 



M 

u^^^ 



GHOST THEORY OF THE ORIGIN OF 



337 



God, The last scientific step, then, it may be in- 
ferred, is to deprive the universe of a God, and man- 
kind of souls. 

This step may be naturally taken by those who 
conceive that the whole process of ghost and god- 
making is based on a mere set of natural and in- 
evitable fallacies, and who decline to recognise that 
these progressive fallacies (if fallacies they are) 
may be steps on a divinely appointed road towards 
truth ; that He led us by a way that we knew not, 
and a path we did not understand. Yet, of course, 
it is plain that a conclusion may be correct, although 
it was reached by en'oneous processes. All scientific 
verities have been attained in this manner, by a 
gradual modification and improvement of inadequate 
working hypotheses, by the slow substitution of 
correctness for error. Thus monotheism and the 
doctrine of the soul may be in no worse case than 
the Copernican theory, or the theory of the circula- 
tion of the blood, or the Darwinian theory; itself the 
successor of innumerable savage guesses, conjectures 
of Empedocles, ideas of Cuvier, of the elder Darwin, 
of Lamarck, and of Chambers. 

At present, of course, the theistic hypothesis, and 
the hypothesis of a soul, do not admit of scien- 
tific verification. The difficulty is to demonstrate 
that 'mind' may exist, and work, apart from 
'matter'. But it may conceivably become verifiable 
that the relations of ' mind ' and ' matter ' are, at all 
events, less obviously and immediately interde- 
pendent, that will and judgment are less closely 
and exclusively attached to physical organisms 



338 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

than modern science has believed. Now, accordin| 
to the anthropological theory of the origin of re- 
ligion, it was precisely from the opposite of the scien- 
tific belief, — it was from the belief that consciousness 
and will may be exerted apart from, at a distance froi 
the physical org;anism, — that thesavage fallacies begs 
which ended, ax hypotkesi, in monotheism, and in tl 
doctrine of the soul. The savage, it is said, start) 
from normal facts, which he misinterpreted. But su] 
pose he started, not from normal facts alone, but als 
from abnormal facts, — from facts which science does 
not yet recognise at all, — then it is possible that the 
conclusions of the savage, though far too sweeping, 
and in parts undeniably erroneous, are yet, to a certain 
extent, not mistaken. He may have had ' a sane spot 
in his mind,' and a sane impulse may have led him tn- 
,'to the right direction. Man may have faculties which 
savages recognise, and which physical science does not 
recognise. Man may be surrounded by agenties which 
savages exaggerate, and which science disregards 
altogether, and these faculties and agencies may 
point to an element of truth which is often cast asii 
as a survival of superstition, as the ' after-image ' 
an illusion. 

The lowest known stage, and, according to the 
evolutionary hypothesis, the earliest stage in religion, 
is the belief in the ghosts of the dead, and in no other 
spiritual entities. Whether this belief anywhei 
exists alone, and untempered by higher creed' 
another question. These ghosts are fed, propitiati 
receive worship, and, to put it briefly, the fittes 
ghosts survive, and become gods. Meanwhile tl 



-ds 
ay J 



GHOST THEORY OP THE ORIGIN OF KEUGION. 339 

conception of ghosts of the dead is more or less 
consciously extended, so that spirits who never were 
incarnate as men become credible beings. They may 
inform inanimate objects, trees, rivers, tire, clouds, 
earth, sky, the great natural departments, and 
thence polytheism results. There are political pro- 
cesses, the consolidation of a state, for example, 
which help to blend these gods of various different 
origins into a divine consistory. One of these gods, 
it may be of sky, or air, becomes king, and reflection 
may gradually come to recognise him not only as 
supreme, but as, theoretically, unique, and thus Zeus, 
from a very limited monarchy, may rise to solitary 
all -fatherhood. Yet Zeus may, originally, have been 
only the ghost of a dead medicine-man who was 
called ' Sky,' or he may have been the departmental 
spirit who presided over the sky, or he may have 
been sky conceived of as a personality, or these 
different elements may have been mingled in Zeus. 
But the whole conception of spirit, in any case, was 
derived, it is argued, from the conception of ghosts, 
and that conception may be traced to erroneous 
savage interpretations of natural and normal facts. 

If all this be valid, the idea of God is derived from 
a savage fallacy, though, of course, it does not follow 
that an idea is erroneous, because it was attained by 
mistaken processes and from false premises. That, 
however, is the inference which many minds arc 
inclined to draw from the evolutionary hypothesis. 
But if the facts on which the savage reasoned are, 
some of them, rare, abnormal, and not scientifically 
accepted; if, in short, they are facts demonstrative 




COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

of unrecognised human faculties, if these facultii 
raise a presumption that will, mind, and organisi 
are less closely interdependent than science suppose! 
then the savage reasoning may contain an important 
element of''rejected trutn> It may even seem, at 
least, conceivable that certain factors in the concep- 
tion of ' spirit ' were not necessarily evolved as tl 
anthropological hypothesis conceives them to hai 
been. 

Science had scarcely begun her secular conflii 
with religion, when she discovered that the battli 
must be fought on haunted ground, on the field 
the ghosts of the dead. ' There are no gods, or only 
dci otiosi, careless, indolent deities. There is nothing 
conscious that survives death, no soul that can exist 
apart from the fleshly body.' Such were the doctrines 
of Epicurus and Lucretius, but to these human 
nature opposed 'facts'; we see, people said, men long 
dead in our dreams, or even when awake : the Homi 
Achilles, beholding Patroclus in a dream, instantl 
infers that there verily js a shadow, an eidolon. 
shadowy consciousness, shadowy presence, which 
outlasts the death of the body. To this Epicurus 
and Lucretius reply, that the belief is caused by 
fallacious inferences from facts, these facts, appear- 
s beheld in sleep or vision, these spectral faces of 
the long dead, are caused by ' films peeled off from the 
surface of objects, which fly to and fro through the 
air, and do likewise frighten our minds when they 
present themselves to us awake as well as in sleep, what 
time we behold strange shapes, and " idols " of the light- 
bereaved,' Lucretius expressly advances this doctrine 






GHOST THEORY OF THE ORIGIN OF RELIGION. 

of 'films' (an application of the Democritean 
theory of perception), 'that we may not believe that 
souls break loose from Acheron, or that shades fly 
about among the living, or that any part of us is left 
behind after death '.^ Believers in ghosts must have 
replied that they do not see, in sleep or awake, 
'films' representing a mouldering corpse, as they 
ought to do on the Lucretian hypothesis, but the 
image, or Sdolon of a living face. Plutarch says 
that if philosophers may laugh, these long enduring 
' films,' from a body perhaps many ages deep in dust, 
are laughable.- However Lucretius is so wedded 
to his 'films' that he explains a purely fanciful 
being, like a centaur, by a fortuitous combination 
of the film of a man with the film of a horse. A 
'ghost' then, is, to the mind of Lucretius, merely 
a casual persistent film of a dead man, composed 
of atoms very light which can fly at inconceivable 
speed, and are not arrested by material obstacles. 
By parity of reasoning no doubt, if Pylhai;foras is 
seen at the same moment in Thurii and Meta- 
pontum, only a film of him is beheld at one of 
these two places. The Democritean theory of 
ordinary perception thus becomes the Lucretian 
theory of dreams and ghosts. Not that Lucretius 
denies the existence of a rational soul, in living 
men," a portion of it may even leave the body 
during sleep, and only a spark may be left in the 
embers of the physical organism. If even that spark 



' Lucretius, iv. 26-75, ^"' 
'Dt/._Orac., ig. 



342 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 



i,vithdraws, death follows, and the soul, no long! 
warmly housed in the body, ceases to exist. Ft 
the ' film ' (ghost) is not the soul, and the soul 
not the film, whereas savage philosophy identifii 
the soul with the ghost. Even Lucretius retains 
the savage conception of the soul as a thing of rarer 
matter, a thing partly separable from the body, bi 
that thing is resolved for ever into its elements 
the death of the body. His imaginary 'film,' 
the other hand, may apparently endure for ages. 

The Lucretian theory had, for Lucretius, I 
advantages of being physical, and of dealing a bli 
at the hated doctrine of a future life. For the publj 
it had the disadvantages of being incapable of prot 
of not explaining the facts, as conceived to exist, am 
of being highly ridiculous, as Plutarch observed. 
Much later philosophers explained all apparitions as 
impressions of sense, recorded on the brain, and so 
actively revived that they seemed to have an objec- 
tive existence. One or two stock cases (Nicolai's, 
and Mrs. A.'s), in which people in a morbid condition, 
saw hallucinations which they knew to be halluci^- 
nations, did, and do, a great deal of duty. Mr. Sully h; 
them, as Hibbert and Brewster have them, engaged as 
protagonists. Collective hallucinations, and the hallu- 
cinations of the sane which coincide with the death, 
or other crisis in the experience of the person win 
seemed to be seen, were set down to imaginatiol 
'e.\pectant attention,' imposture, mistaken identil 
and so forth. 

Without dwelling on the causes, physical 
psychological, which have been said by Frazer 



asfl 
as I 



GHOST THEORY OF THE OaiGIN OF RELIGION. 343 

Tiree (1707), Ferrier, Hibberl, Scott, and others, to 
account for the hallucinations of the sane, for 
'ghosts,' Mr. Tylor has ably erected his theory 
of animism, or the belief in spirits. Thinking 
savages, he says, ' were deeply impressed by two 
groups of biological phenomena,' by the facts of living, 
dying, sleep, trance, waking and disease. They 
asked : ' What is the difference between a living body 
and a dead one ? ' They wanted to know the causes 
of sleep, trance and death. They were also con- 
cerned to explain the appearances of dead or absent 
human beings in dreams and waking visions. Now 
it was plain that ' life ' could go away, as it does in 
death, or seems to do in dreamless sleep. Again, a 
phantasm of a living man can go away and appear 
to waking or sleeping people at a distance. The 
conclusion was reached by savages that the phantasm 
which thus appears is identical with the life which 
'goes away' in sleep or trance. Sometimes it re- 
turns, when the man wakes, or escapes from his 
trance. Sometimes it stays away, he dies, his body 
corrupts, but the phantasm endures, and is occasion- 
ally seen in sleeping or waking vision. The general 
result of savage thought is that man's life must be 
conceived as a personal and rational entity, called his 
' soul,' while it remains in his body, his ' wraith,' when 
it is beheld at a distance during his life, his 'ghost,' 
when it is observed after his death. Many circum- 
stances confirmed or illustrated this savage hypothesis. 
Breath remains with the body during Hfe, deserts it 
at death. Hence the word& spiritus, 'spirit,' 'Trvevfia, 
anima, and, when the separable nature of the shadow 



344 



COCK LANE AND COMMON -BfiHSfe. 



is noticed, hence come 'shade,' 'umbra," <rKid,v/iU 
analogues in many languages. The hypothesis vrm 
also Htrent^thened, by the great difficulty whi<a 
savages feel in discriminating between what occun 
in dreams, and what occurs to men awake. Maj 
civilised persons feel the same difficulty with regaii 
to hallucinations beheld by them when in bed, asleea 
or awake they know not, on the dim border of exisQ 
ence. Reflection on ail these experiences ended 
the belief in spirits, in souls of the living, in wraithi 
of the living, in ghosts of the dead, and, finally, ij 
God. 

This theory is most cogently presented by Mrv 
Tylor, and is confirmed by examples chosen from his 
wide range of reading. But, among these normal 
and natural facts, as of sleep, dream, breath, life, 
dying, Mr. Tylor includes (not as facts, but as 
examples of applied animistic theory) cases of ' clair- 
voyanci:,' apparitions of the dying seen by the living 
at a distance, second sight, ghostly disturbances i 
knocking and rapping, movements of objects, and e 
forth. It is not a question for Mr. Tylor whethej 
clairvoyance ever occurs: whether 'death-bed wraithsS 
have been seen to an extent not explicable by thffl 
laws of chance, whether disturbances and move- 
ments of objects not to be accounted for by human 
agency are matters of universal and often well-at- 
tested report. Into the question of fact, Mr. Tyloj 
explicitly declines to enter; these things only conJ 
cern him because they have been commonly ej& 
plained by the ' animistic hjfpotbesis,' that is, by thfl 
fancied action of spirits. The animistic hypothesis 



GHOST THEORY OF THE ORIGIN OF RELIGION. 

again, is the result, naturally fallacious, of s 
man's reasonings on life, death, sleep, dreams, trance, 
breath, shadow and the other kindred biological 
phenomena. Thus clairvoyance (on the animistic 
hypothesis) is the flight of the conscious 'spirit" 
of a living man across space or time; the 'death- 
bed wraith' is the visible apparition of the newly- 
emancipated 'spirit,' and 'spirits' cause the unex- 
plained disturbances and movements of objects. Inl 
fact it is certain that the animistic hypothesis (though 
a mere fallacy) does colligate a great number of 
facts very neatly, and has persisted from times of 
low savagery to the present age of reason. So here 
is a case of the savage origin and persistent ' survi- 
val ' of a hypothesis, ^the most potent hypothesis in J 
the history of humanity. 

From Mr. Tylor's point of view, his concern with 
the subject ceases here, it is not his business to 
ascertain whether the abnormal facts are facts or 
fancies. Yet, to other students, this question is very 
important. First, if clairvoyance, wraiths, and the 
other alleged phenomena, really do occur, or have 
occurred, then savage man had much better grounds 
for the animistic hypothesis than if no such pheno- 
mena ever existed. For instance, if a medicine-man , 
not only went into trances, but brought back from 
these expeditions knowledge otherwise inaccessible, 
then there were better grounds for believing in a 
consciousness exerted apart from the body than if 
there were no evidence but that of non-veridical 
dreams. If merely the dream -coincidences which 
the laws of chance permit were observed) the belief 



346 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SBNSB. 

in the soul's dream -flight would win less favoural 
and general acceptance than it would if clairvoyan< 
' the sleep of the shadow,' were a real if rare expert* 
ence. The very name given by the Eskimos to tl 
hypnotic state, ' the sleep of the shadow,' proves thi 
savages do make distinctions between normal ai 
abnormal cofiditions of slumber- 
In the same way a few genuine wraiths, 
ghosts, or ' veridical hallucinations,' would be enoug] 
to start the animistic hypothesis, or to confi: 
notably, if it was already started. As to disturbances 
and movements of objects unexplained, these, in his 
own experience, suggested, even to De Morgan, the 
hypothesis of a conscious, active, and purposeful 
will, not that of any human being present. Now 
such a will is hardly to be defined otherwise than 
as 'spiritual'. This order of phenomena, like tht 
of clairvoyance and wraiths, might either give rise 
the savage animistic hypothesis, or, at least, might 
confirm it greatly. In fact, if the sets of abnormal 
phenomena existed, or were held to exist, savage man 
scarcely needed the normal phenomena for the basis 
of his spiritual belief. The normal phenomena lent 
him such terms as ' spirit,' ' shadow,' but much of 
his theory might have been built on the foundation 
of the abnormal phenomena alone. A ' veridical 
hallucination' of the dying would give him a 'wraith"; 
a recognised hallucination of the dead would give 
him a ghost ; the often reported and unexplained 
movements and disturbances would give him a vui, 
' house spirit,' ' brownie,' ' domovoy,' follet, lar, 
llttin. Or these occurrences might suggest to t] 



hanji 
Losa 



GHOST THEORY OF THE ORIGIN OF RELIGION. 347 

thinking savage that some discontented influence 
survived from the recently dead. 

Four thousand years have passed since houses 
were haunted in Egypt, and have left some sane, 
educated, and methodical men to meet the same 
annoyances as the ancient Egyptians did, by the 
same measures. We do not pretend to discover, 
without examinationj the causes of the sounds 
and sights which baffle trained and not super- 
stitious investigators. But we do say that similar 
occurrences, in a kraal or an Eskimo hut, in a 
wigwam, in a cave, or under a gunyeh, would greatly 
confirm the animistic hypothesis of savages. The 
theory of imposture {in some cases) does undeniably 
break down, for the people who hold it cannot even 
suggest a modus operandi within the reach of the 
human beings concerned, as in the case of the 
Wesleys. The theory of contagious hallucination of 
all the senses is the property of Coleridge alone. 
The hypothesis of a nervous force which sets up 
centres of conscious action is confined to Hartmann, 
and to certain Highland philosophers, cavalierly 
dismissed by the Rev. Robert Kirk as 'men illite- 
rate'. Instead of making these guesses, the savage 
thinkers merely applied the animistic hypothesis, 
which they had found to work very well already, and, 
as De Morgan says, to colligate the phenomena 
better than any other theory. We cannot easily 
conceive men who know neither sleep nor dreams, 
but if the normal phenomena of sleep and dreams 
had not existed, the abnormal phenomena already 
described, if they occurred, as they are universally 



348 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

said to do, could have given rise, when speculatai 
upon, to the belief in spirits. 

But, it may reasonably be urged, 'the nature 
familiar facts of life, death, sleep, waking, dreams, ' 
breath, and shadows, are all versa causa, do undeni- 
ably exist, and, without the aid of any of your abnor- 
mal facts, afford basis enough for the animistic hypoi j 
thesis. Moreover, after countless thousands of yea] 
during which superstition has muttered about youn 
abnormal facts, official science still declines to hej 
a word on the topic of clairvoyance or telepathy^ 
You don't find the Royal Society investigating secom 
sight, or attending to legends about tables whicf 
rebel against the law of gravitation.' 

These are cogent remarks. Normal facts, perhapsJ9 
may have suggested the belief in spirits, the animistic 
hypothesis. But we do not find the hypothesis 
(among the backward races) where abnormal facts 
are not alleged to be matters of comparatively fre^^ 
quent experience. Consequently we do not knoiv thaCi 
the normal facts, alone, suggested the existence i 
spirits to early thinkers, we can only make the state 
ment on a priori grounds. Like George Eliot's run 
sage we ' think it sounds a deal likelier'. But that^ 
after all, though a taking, is not a powerful and coi|< 
elusive syllogism. 

Again, we certainly do not expect to see the! 
Royal Society inquiring into second sight, or clair- 
voyance, or thought transference. When the Royal 
Society was first founded several of its members,.- 
Pepys, F.R.S. ; Mr. Robert Boyle, F.R.S.; I 
Joseph Glanvill, F.R.S., went into these 



'■; the RctJ 
>e things ^H 



GHOST THEORY OF THE ORIGIN OF RELIGION. 349 

good deal. But, in spite of their title, they were 
only amateurs. They had no professional dignity to 
keep up. They were well aware that they, unlike 
the late Mr. Faraday, did not know, by inspiration 
or by common-sense, the limits of the possible. 
They tried all things, it was such a superstitious age. 
Now men of science, or the majority of them, for 
there are some exceptions, know what is, and what 
ia not possible. They know that germs of life may 
possibly come down on meteorites from somewhere 
else, and they produced an argument for the exist- 
ence of a bathybius. But they also know that a 
man is not a bird to be in two places at once, like 
Pythagoras, and that nobody can see through a 
stone wall. These, and similar allegations, they 
reckon impossible, and, if the facts happen, so much 
the worse for the facts. They can only be due to 
imposture or mal-observation, and there is an end of 
the matter. This is the view of official science. 
Unluckily, not many years ago, official science was 
equally certain that the ordinary phenomena of 
hypnotism were based on imposture and on mal- 
observation. These phenomena, too, were tabooed. 
But so many people could testify to them, and they 
could be so easily explained by the suggestive force 
of suggestion, that they were reluctantly admitted 
within the sacred citadel. Many people, sane, not 
superstitious, healthy, and even renowned as scien- 
tific specialists, attest the existence of the still rarer 
phenomena which are said, in certain cases, to ac- 
company the now more familiar incidents of hypno- 
tism. But these phenomena have never yet been 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

explained by any theory which science recognises, ; 
she does recognise that suggestion is suggestive. 
Therefore these rarer phenomena manifestly do not 
exist, and cannot be the subject of legitimate inquiry. 

These are unanswerable obser\'ations, and it is 
only the antiquarian who can venture, in his humble 
way. to reply to them. His answer has a certain 
force ad kominem, that is, as addressed to anthropo- 
logists. They, too, have but recently been admitted 
within the scientific fold ; time was when their facts 
were regarded as mere travellers' tales. Mr. Max 
Muller is now, perhaps, almost alone in his very low esti- 
mate of anthropological evidence, and, possibly, even 
that sturdy champion is beginning to yield ground. 
Defending the validity of the testimony on which 
anthropologists reason about the evolution of religicw 
custom, manners, mythologj', law, Mr. Tylor writes :- 

' It is a matter worthy of consideration that 1 
accounts of similar phenomena of culture, recurrinj 
in different parts of the world, actually supply ind 
dental proof of their own authenticity, . . . Thetei 
of recurrence comes in. . , . The possibility of inta 
tionaj or unintentional mystification is often bari^ 
by such a state of things as that a similar statement 
is made in two remote lands by two witnesses, of whom 
A lived a century before B, and B appears never to 
have heard of A,' 

If for 'similar phenomena of culture' here, 
substitute 'similar abnormal phenomena' {such i 
clairvoyance, wraiths, unexplained disturbances), 
Tylor's argument in favour of his evidence for i 
stitutions applies equally well to our evidence 



GHOSY THEORY OF THE ORIGIN OF RELIGION. 351 

mysterious ' facts '. ' How distant are the countries,' 
he goes on, ' how wide apart are the dates, how 
different the creeds and characters in the catalogue 
of the facts of civilisation, needs no further showing' 
— to the student of Mr. Tylor's erudite footnotes. 
In place of 'facts of civilisation' read 'psychical 
phenomena,' and Mr. Tylor's argument applies to the 
evidence for these rejected and scouted beliefs. 

The countries from which ' ghosts ' and ' wraiths ' 
and ' clairvoyance ' are reported are ' distant ' ; the 
dates are ' wide apart ' : the ' creeds and characters of 
the observers ' are ' different ' ; yet the evidence is as 
uniform, and as recurrent, as it is in the case of in- ■ 
stitutions, manners, customs. Indeed the evidence I 
for the rejected and abnormal phenomena is even 
more ' recurrent ' than the evidence for customs and 
institutions. Polyandry, totemism, human sacrifice, 
the taboo, are only reported as existing in remote 
and semi-civilised countries. Clairvoyance, wraiths, 
ghosts, mysterious disturbances and movements of 
objects are reported as existing, not only in distant 
ages, but to-day ; not only among savages or barbari- 
ans, but in London, Paris, Milan. No ages can be 
more wide apart, few countries much more distant, 
than ancient Egj-pt and modern England : no charac- 
ters look more different than that of an old scribe 
under Pharaoh, and that of a distinguished soldier 
under Queen Victoria. Yet the scribe of Khemi and 
General Campbell suffer from the same inexplicable 
annoyance, attribute it to the same very abnormal 
agency, and attempt (not unsuccessfully) to com- 
municate with that agency, in precisely the same way. 



COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

This, though a striking, is an isolated and ] 
haps a casual example of recurrence and uniformitj" 
in evidence. Mr. Tylor's Primitive Culture is itself a 
store-house of other examples, to which more may 
easily be added. For example, there is the old and 
savage belief in a 'sending'. The medicine-man, or 
medium, or witch, can despatch a conscious, visible. 
and intelligent agent, non-normal, to do his bidding 
at a distance. This belief is often illustrated in the 
Scandinavian sagas. Rink testifies to it among the 
Eskimo, Grinnell among the Pawnees: Porphyry 
alleges that by some such ' telepathic impact " 
Plotinus, from a distance, made a hostile magician 
named Alexander ' double up like an empty bag,' 
and saw and reported this agreeable circumstance.' 
Hardly any abnormal phenomenon or faculty sounds 
less plausible, and the "spectral evidence' for the 
presence of a witch's 'sending,' when the poor 
woman could establish an alibi for her visible self, 
appeared dubious even to Cotton Mather. But, in 
their Phantasms of the Living, Messrs. Gurney and 
Myers give cases in which a visible 'sending' was 
intentionally emitted by Baron Schrenck Notzing, 
by a stock-broker, by a young student of engin- 
eering, and by a French hospital nurse, to take no 
other instances. The person visited frequently by 
the ' sendings ' in the last cases was a French phy- 
sician engaged in the hospital, who reports and attests 
the facts. All the cases are given at first hand on 
the testimony of the senders and of the recipients qL 
the sendings. Bulwer Lytton was familiar with 1 
1 Porphyry, Vita Plotiui. 



;nts o£ 

th ttJ 



GHOST THEORY OP THE ORIGIN OF RELIGION. 353 

belief, and uses the 'shining shadow' in A Strange 
Story. Now here is uniform recurrent evidence from 
widely severed ages, from distant countries, from the 
Polar North, the American prairie, Neoplatonic 
Egypt and Greece, England and New England of 
the seventeenth centurj', and England and Germany 
of to-day. The 'creeds and characters of the obser- 
vers ' are as ' different ' as Neoplatonism, Shamanism, 
Christianity of divers sects, and probably Agnosticism 
or indifference. All these conditions of unvarying 
testimony constitute good evidence for institutions 
and customs ; anthropologists, who eagerly accept 
such testimony in their own studies, may decide as 
to whether they deserve total neglect when adduced 
in another field of anthropology. 

Turning from ' sendings,' or 'telepathy' volun- 
tarily brought to bear on one living person by another, 
we might examine 'death-bed wraiths," or the tele- 
pathic impact — 'if that hypothesis of theirs be 
sound ' — produced by a dying on a living human being. 
A savage example, in which a Fuegian native on board 
an English ship saw his father, who was expiring in 
Tierra del Ftiego, has the respectable authority of Mr. 
Darwin's Cruise o/lhc Beagle. Instances, on the other 
hand, in which Australian blacks, or Fijians, see the 
phantasms of dead kinsmen warning them of their 
decease (which follows punctually) may be found in 
Messrs. Fison and Hewitt's Kamilaroi and Kiimai. 

From New Zealand Mr, Tylor cites, with his 
authorities, the following example : ' ' A party of 
Maoris lone of whom told the story) were seated 
' Primitive CnltuTi, 1. 404. 

23 




354 COCK I^NB AND COMMON-SENSE. 

round a fire in the open air, when there appeared; 
seen only by two of them, the figure of a relative left 
ill at home. They exclaimed, the figure vanished, 
and. on the return of the parly, it appeared that th^ 
sick man had died about the time of the vision.' 
traveller in New Zealand illustrates the native belli 
in the death-wraith by an amusing anecdote. A 
Rangatira. or native gentleman, had gone on the 
war-path. One day he walked into his wife's house, 
but after a few moments could not be found. The 
military expedition did not return, so the lady, takii 
it for granted that her husband, the owner of 
wraith, was dead, married an admirer. The halll 
cination, however, was not ' veridical ' ; the warrii 
came home, but he admitted that he had no remei 
and no feud against his successor. The owner of a 
wraith which has been seen may be assumed to be 
dead. Such is Maori belief. The modern civilised 
examples of death-wraiths, attested and recorded in 
Phantastns of ike Living, are numerous ; but statistics 
prove that a lady who marries again on the strength 
of a wraith may commit an error of judgment, and 
become liable to the penalty of bigamy. The Maoris, 
no statisticians, take a more libera! and tolerant view. 
These are comparatively scanty examples from savage 
life, but then they are corroborated by the wealth of 
recurrent and coincident evidence from civilised races, 
ancient and modern. 

On the point of clairvoyance, it is unnecessary 
dwell. The second-sighted man, the seer of eveni 
remote in space or not yet accomplished in ti 
is familiar everywhere, from the Hebrides to 



il 



Coppermine River, from the Samoyed and Eskimo 
to the Zulu, from the Euphrates to the Hague. The 
noises heard in ' haunted houses," the knocking, rout- 
ing, dragging of heavy bodies, is recorded, Mr. 
Tylor says, by Dayaks. Singhalese, Siamese, and 
Esths ; Dennys, in his Folk-lore of China, notes the 
occurrences in the Celestial Empire; Grimm, in 
his German Mythology, gives examples, starting from 
the communicative knocks of a spirit near Bingen, 
in the chronicle of Rudolf (856), and Suetonius tells 
a similar tale from imperial Rome. The physician 
of Catherine de Medicis, Ambroise Pare, describes 
every one of the noises heard by the Wesleys, long 
after his day, as familiar, and as caused by devils. 
Recurrence and conformity of evidence cannot be 
found in greater force. 

The anthropological test of evidence for the 
abnormal and rejected phenomena is thus amply 
satisfied. Unless we say that these phenomena are 
' impossible,' whereas totemism, the couvade, can- 
nibalism, are possible, the testimony to clairvoyance, 
and the other peculiar occurrences, is as good in its 
way as the evidence for odd and scarcely credible 
customs and institutions. There remains a last and 
notable circumstance. All the abnormal phenomena, 
in the modern and medieval tales, occur most fre- 
quently in the presence of convulsionaries, like the 
so-called victims of witches, like the Hon. Master 
Sandilands, Lord Torphichen's son (1720), like the 
grandson of William Morse in New England (1680), 
and like Bovet's case of the demon of Spraiton.' 

' In Ihe PandtmoHium, or Dtvil's CloysUr, of Richard Bovel, 



ik 



356 COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. 

The 'mediums' of modern spiritualism, 
Francis Fey, are, or pretend to be, subject to fit? 
anesthesia, jerks, convulsive movements, and trana 
As Mr. Tylor says about his savage jossakeeds, pow- 3 
wows, Birraarks. peaimen, everywhere ' these people 
suffer from hysterical, convulsive, and epileptic affec- 
tions '. Thus the physical condition, all the world 
over, of persons who exhibit most freely the accepted 
phenomena, is identical. All the world over, too, 
the same persons are credited with the rejec(ed,m 
phenomena, clairvoyance, ' discerning of spirits^ 
powers of voluntary' 'telepathic' and ' telekineti<a| 

' impact. Thus we find that uniform and 1 
evidence vouches for a mass of phenomena whicj 
science scouts. Science has now accepted a poi 
tion of the mass, but still rejects the stranger oc- ' 
currences. Our argument is that their invariably 
alleged presence, in attendance on the minor occur- 
rences, is, at least, a point worthy of examination. 
The undesigned coincidences of testimony represent 
a great deal of smoke, and proverbial wisdom sug- 
gests a presumption in favour of a few sparks of fire. 
Now, if there are such sparks, the animistic hypo- 
thesis may not, of course, be valid, — 'spirits' may 
not exist, — but the universal belief in their existence 
may have had its origin, not in normal facts only, 
but in abnormal facts. And these facts, at the 
lowest estimate, must suggest that man may have 
faculties, and be surrounded by agencies, which 
physical science does not take into account in its 

I theory of the universe and of human nature. 

We have already argued that the doctrines ( 



ictnnes oM 



GHOST THEORY OF THE ORIGIN OF RELIGION. 357 

theism and of the soul need not to be false, even if 
they were arrived at slowly, after a succession of 
grosser opinions. But if the doctrines were reached 
by a process which started from real facts of human 
nature, observed by savages, but not yet recognised by 
physical science, then there may have been grains of 
truth even in the cruder and earlier ideas, and these 
grains of gold may have been disengaged, and 
fashioned, not without Divine aid, into the sacred 
things of spiritual religion. 

The stories which we have been considering are 
often trivial, sometimes comic ; but they are uni- 
versally diffused, and as well established as universally 
coincident testimony can establish anything. Now, 
if there be but one spark of real fire to all this smoke, 
then the purely materialistic theories of life and of 
the world must be reconsidered. They seem very 
well established, but so have many other theories 
seemed, that are long gone the way of all things 
human. The authority for the Maori belief (p. 354) 
is Polack's New Zealand^ vol. i. p. 269. 



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